For years, Africa’s education sector has struggled with one of its most persistent yet overlooked problems: the slow, stressful, and error-prone process of manual exam grading. Teachers across the continent still mark hundreds of theory scripts by hand, often under tight deadlines and with little institutional support. Mistakes happen. Records go missing. Students wait weeks for results that aren’t always accurate and rarely include feedback that helps them improve.
This is the reality Anjolaoluwa Ajayi encountered firsthand as a computing student and course representative at Babcock University. That early exposure eventually grew into Acad AI, a fast-rising assessment platform using artificial intelligence to bring speed, fairness, and transparency to grading across Africa.
Anjolaoluwa Ajayi is the founder of Acad AI. She is a former Data and AI Consultant at EY, one of the Big Four consulting firms, and a tech blogger for UK-based data and analytics firm Vidi Corp. She also writes for major Medium publications such as Level Up Coding, Code Like a Girl, and AI Advances. She graduated as the second-best student from Babcock University’s School of Computing, where her final-year research project laid the foundation for what later became Acad AI.
A Founder Shaped by the Problem She Is Solving
Anjola’s path to building Acad AI didn’t begin in a tech accelerator, it began in classrooms lined with piles of unmarked scripts.
“I watched lecturers mark hundreds of papers during their holidays,” she recalls. “Many told me they never truly rested because they spent most of that time marking.”
She also witnessed the toll on students, including herself. Some failed courses they genuinely understood, not because of lack of effort, but due to rushed marking, fatigue, or missing records distorting their real performance.
After conducting a survey across several Nigerian universities, the picture was the same: overwhelmed educators, disadvantaged students, and a grading system buckling under outdated processes.
A particularly striking moment came when she encountered a viral post by former WAEC examiner Gboyega Olokunbola. In his account, he described marking over 300 theory scripts in two weeks for very little pay, while some colleagues took on 600 to 1,200 scripts just to survive. Mistakes were inevitable; capable students failed in silence.
“That post confirmed what I already sensed,” Anjola notes. “The scale of the problem was far bigger than what I saw in my own school.”
With this clarity, she transformed her final-year project into a full-scale platform aimed at modernizing assessment and restoring trust in academic results.
Reinventing Grading Through AI
Acad AI uses artificial intelligence to read and interpret student answers in a way that mirrors how a human teacher understands written responses. The system grades theory and objective questions, checks the logic, aligns the answers with the marking guide, and generates personalized feedback, all within minutes.
Students no longer wait weeks for results. Teachers reclaim precious time and can focus more on teaching, mentoring, and improving learning outcomes.
The platform’s standout features include:
- Deep theory grading (not just multiple-choice)
- Clear scoring breakdowns
- Personalized, actionable feedback
- Review and score-adjustment tools for teachers
- Anti-malpractice systems and secure autosaving
In a space where most EdTech platforms handle only automated quizzes, Acad AI tackles the hardest part: understanding and scoring open-ended written responses at scale.
Early Traction and Real Impact
The response to Acad AI has been impressive. The platform now has over 2,500 users, including teachers from more than 100 schools worldwide. Institutions such as Babcock University have already used it to grade real-life theory exams, including postgraduate assessments.
Nearly 10 schools are on the enterprise waitlist, preparing to onboard the system more formally.
The team has also organized several free AI workshops for educators across Africa and beyond, sessions many teachers say have helped them reduce marking stress, improve feedback quality, and integrate AI into their workflow more confidently.
Building an AI Startup in Africa: The Challenges
Like many entrepreneurs in the African tech ecosystem, Anjola is navigating a landscape filled with both opportunities and steep challenges.
Decision-making in educational institutions is often slow, stretching over weeks or months. AI infrastructure is also costly, requiring strong computing power for reliable performance.
“Thanks to support from AWS and our technical partner Cloudplexo, we’ve been able to manage the cost and scalability challenges,” she explains.
There is also a cultural barrier. Some educators worry that AI may replace them, a misconception Anjola is working to correct. To her, Acad AI exists to support teachers, not substitute them. Connectivity issues in some regions add another layer of complexity, though the team continues optimizing for low-bandwidth environments.
Despite these hurdles, Acad AI is growing steadily through pilots, partnerships, community engagement, and a strong referral network among teachers.
Scaling for Continental Impact
In the coming year, the startup plans to scale through:
- Partnerships with secondary schools and universities
- Teacher communities and ambassador programs
- Targeted pilot programs in institutions
- B2B collaborations with exam bodies and online learning platforms
- Technical improvements to support larger user groups
The goal is clear: Position Acad AI as the preferred assessment platform across the continent.
A Bold Vision for the Future
Looking ahead 3–5 years, the Founder envisions Acad AI becoming the trusted assessment backbone for millions of learners across Africa.
“We want to power fair, fast, and transparent grading for institutions across the continent and beyond,” she emphasises. “From secondary schools to national exams, the goal is to bring trust back into assessments.”
More than just a product, Acad AI represents a shift in how Africa approaches learning, fairness, and academic evaluation — a transformation that is long overdue.
