Injini has opened applications for an eight-month artificial intelligence (AI) venture builder and incubation programme focused on developing education technology for African classrooms.
Backed by Coefficient Giving, the programme will select 12 pre-formed teams from nine Southern African countries to spend five months developing AI-powered minimum viable products before five teams progress to a three-month incubation phase.
Each of the five ventures selected for incubation will receive $25,000 in equity-free seed funding, alongside technical, education and business support.
The programme is designed to address challenges including teacher shortages, foundational literacy gaps, linguistic diversity and connectivity and device affordability constraints.
"We've spent years engaging with brilliant people across the region who understand education problems intimately, but lack the team, capital, or clear path to build a solution," said Krista Davidson, executive director of Injini. "Add to this that Africa is significantly underrepresented in the data training AI tools. If we don't build our own solutions now, we risk EdTech that simply doesn't work for African classrooms. This venture builder is aimed at closing these gaps."
The programme will focus on five themes: foundational learning; teacher capacity and classroom support; learner pathways and futures; inclusion and access; and ecosystem and engagement.
Injini is accepting applications from teams, with three or more co-founders preferred, though smaller or larger teams will be considered if applicants can demonstrate that they can fully engage with the programme and meet the founder experience and skill requirements
Teams must cover three core roles: a builder who can bring the product to life, a context lead with lived experience or deep understanding of the problem, and a commercial or operations lead who can bring all the pieces together.
"In this programme, we are looking for people who've lived close to a real education problem – a teacher who's watched literacy gaps widen for years, a developer who's tried to build something for a school and hit a wall, someone who has an idea of why the current tools don't work and wants to change that," said Davidson.
"If that's you, and you can pull together a small team to build with, this programme is designed to take you from a good idea to a working, tested venture."
Applicants must be based in South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia or Zimbabwe.
The programme will be delivered mostly virtually, but participants must attend several mandatory in-person engagements in Johannesburg, with travel and accommodation covered for up to three team members.
The five teams selected for incubation will spend three months refining their products, conducting further user testing, measuring educational impact and developing go-to-market strategies and financial models.
Applications opened on 7 September 2026 and will close at midnight on 27 September. Injini said applications will be assessed on a rolling basis, with successful applicants to be announced in October.
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