Renaissance Philanthropy Launches STEP-AI To Explore AI-Enabled Teacher Coaching In Sub-Saharan Africa
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW YORK, May 18, 2026 – Renaissance Philanthropy, in partnership with the Gates Foundation, today launched the Strengthening Teacher Effectiveness & Practice with AI (STEP-AI) program to explore how AI-enabled tools can deliver scalable, high-quality coaching for teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
By pairing technical innovation with investments in local capacity, STEP-AI aims to create a scalable, cost-effective model for teacher support that will improve learning opportunities for children across the region. STEP-AI reflects growing momentum behind Renaissance Philanthropy’s approach of leveraging technical innovation to solve vexing challenges in Africa, through initiatives including the Learning Engineering Virtual Institute and Tools Competition, which have supported 10 teams driving impact across the continent.
STEP-AI’s first two grantees are Room to Read, and Rising Academies which will work in partnership with TeachFX. Teams from these organizations will develop AI-driven personalized coaching tools for teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa, prioritizing open-source tools and public assets to ensure that their findings benefit the broader field, a key aspect of Renaissance’s education strategy.
Across Sub-Saharan Africa, education systems are working to close persistent gaps in foundational literacy, with nearly 90% of 10-year-olds not yet reading proficiently. Within current system capacity, providing teachers with sustained, personalized coaching at scale remains a shared challenge. STEP-AI will work alongside local partners to strengthen systems' ability to support teachers more consistently and with greater precision in the classroom.
Delivering sustained, high-quality coaching to teachers remains one of the most urgent and complex educational challenges in the region. High supervisor-to-teacher ratios, limited infrastructure, and uneven pedagogical expertise mean that feedback is often infrequent, delayed, or generic. This leaves a persistent gap between evidence-based instructional approaches and what happens in classrooms.
“Teachers are one of the most important factors in a child’s education, yet most receive little ongoing support to improve their practice. STEP-AI represents an exciting opportunity to explore how AI can help bridge that gap at scale, not by replacing human coaching, but by extending its reach to teachers who need it most.”
STEP-AI will test AI’s abilities to address these problems. These technologies show the promise of being able to analyze classroom interactions in real time, assess how well teachers are implementing structured lesson plans, and generate actionable coaching insights to help teachers improve.
Rising Academies, in partnership with TeachFX, will develop an audio-based coaching system in Ghana that will capture classroom audio and deliver personalized feedback to teachers via WhatsApp. The goal is to increase the frequency of coaching without requiring additional in-person visits. Coaches will access a dashboard of insights aggregated from their classroom’s data that will guide targeted follow-up and support.
Room to Read will adapt its video-based AI coaching tool, already piloted in India, for deployment in South Africa. This tool allows teachers to upload classroom recordings or self-reflection forms to receive personalized, actionable feedback, helping to expand coaching where in-person visits are infrequent. Coaches receive insights aggregated across schools to guide their visits and prioritize where support is most needed.
Renaissance Philanthropy and its implementation partner, The Learning Agency, will support the STEP-AI teams in building and testing these tools, generating evidence and public goods to inform the field. Philanthropies or other organizations interested in learning more can contact media@renphil.org.
About Renaissance Philanthropy
Renaissance Philanthropy is a nonprofit organization with a mission to fuel a 21st century renaissance by increasing the ambition of philanthropists, scientists, and innovators. The organization designs time-bound, thesis-driven funds led by field experts and inspires talent to take action through playbooks and communities. In its first two years, Renaissance Philanthropy catalyzed $533M in philanthropic funding for science, technology, and innovation, launching 22 time-bound, thesis-driven, philanthropic funds and programs addressing global challenges.
About the Gates Foundation
The Gates Foundation is a philanthropic organization that works to dramatically reduce disease and poverty and build a more equal world. They invest their expertise and resources in organizations, research institutions, and global alliances that are fueling progress toward a future that is free of infectious diseases, provides economic opportunity for all, and ensures the health of mothers and babies. To learn more, visit https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about and follow on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X.
