Adesua: Development and Feasibility Study of an AI WhatsApp Bot for Science Learning in West Africa

TL;DR

Adesua is a WhatsApp-based AI teaching assistant designed to improve science learning in West Africa by providing accessible, curriculum-aligned support and formative assessment through generative AI and examination data.

Contribution

The paper introduces Adesua, a novel AI WhatsApp bot that extends existing platforms to deliver scalable, low-cost personalized science education in resource-limited settings.

Findings

High perceived usefulness with 93.75% helpfulness score for AI answers

Feasibility demonstrated with 56 active users over 6 months in Ghana

Effective integration of textbooks and exam questions for conversational learning

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa faces persistently high student-teacher ratios and shortages of qualified teachers, limiting students' access to personalized learning support and formative assessment. To address this challenge, we present Adesua, a WhatsApp-based AI Teaching Assistant for science education that extends the Kwame for Science platform. Adesua leverages WhatsApp's widespread adoption in Africa to provide accessible, curriculum-aligned learning support for Junior High School (JHS) and Senior High School (SHS) students across West Africa. The system integrates curated textbooks and 33 years of national examination questions with generative AI to enable conversational question answering and automated assessment with feedback via a WhatsApp bot. Students can ask science questions, take timed or untimed multiple-choice tests by topic or exam year, and receive instant grading and detailed explanations of correct and incorrect responses. A 6-month feasibility deployment in 2025 had 56 active users in Ghana, including students and parents. Quantitative evaluation showed a high perceived usefulness, with a helpfulness score of 93.75\% for AI-generated answers, albeit with a small number of ratings (n=16). These preliminary results provide a basis for more extensive future evaluation of a WhatsApp-based AI assistant to assess its potential to offer scalable, low-cost personalized learning support and formative assessment in resource-constrained educational contexts.