Five African universities are piloting AI in the classroom — with the rulebook written first

The question at five African universities this term is not whether AI belongs in teaching, but how to let it in without losing control of it. A nine-month programme led by WISE and Ashesi University's Education Collaborative has begun pilots at Bells University of Technology in Nigeria, Botho University in Botswana, KCA University in Kenya, the University of Kigali in Rwanda and Université d'Abomey-Calavi in Benin. Each is testing something specific and governed: a tutor built only on approved course materials, with a dashboard and human review, in Kigali; an early-warning tool that flags students who may need mentoring, in Botswana; declarations of AI use in dissertations, in Benin. The pilots, running to June 2027, follow research across 47 universities and 3,875 respondents that found only four in ten institutions had a comprehensive AI policy. The teams met in Nairobi on October 2 to finalise plans that pair every experiment with governance.

SDG 4 · Quality education — Mechanism: institutional program