AI Teaching Assistant for STEM Challenge

Africa faces a catastrophic shortage of STEM teachers, with single teachers responsible for hundreds of students and many schools having no qualified math or science instructors at all. Students struggle through textbooks without guidance, unable to understand concepts or check their work, leading to failure rates exceeding 70% in STEM subjects. A student in Nigeria cannot get help with calculus homework, a learner in Mozambique has no one to explain physics concepts, and entire schools in South Sudan lack anyone who can teach chemistry. This STEM education crisis perpetuates underdevelopment as Africa cannot produce the engineers, doctors, and scientists it desperately needs. Developers must create offline AI tutors that solve and explain math, physics, and chemistry problems step-by-step, adapt to individual learning needs, provide unlimited practice, and give every African student a personal STEM teacher in their pocket.

The AI Teaching Assistant for STEM Challenge calls for innovative educational AI that can provide personalized STEM tutoring to millions of African students lacking access to qualified teachers. This challenge addresses the critical shortage of STEM educators and the need for quality education that adapts to individual learning needs.

Participants will develop AI teaching assistants that can solve and explain mathematics, physics, and chemistry problems step-by-step, working completely offline. The system must understand handwritten or typed problems, provide detailed explanations at appropriate difficulty levels, offer practice problems, and track student progress. It should adapt teaching methods based on student performance and learning style.

Successful solutions will implement symbolic math solvers, physics simulation engines, chemistry equation balancers, and natural language explanation generators. The system should support curriculum from primary through university level, provide visual representations of concepts, offer worked examples, and identify knowledge gaps. It must handle multiple notation systems and explain concepts in locally relevant contexts.

We particularly value solutions that align with African educational curricula, support exam preparation for national and international assessments, include interactive experiments and simulations, and provide teacher tools for classroom integration. The platform should democratize access to quality STEM education, helping students excel regardless of their school's resources or teacher availability.