Regional Initiative for Skilling and Employment (RiSE)

Regional Initiative for Skilling and Employment (RiSE) is a collective action initiative that brings government, schools, communities, civil society and technical partners together so that adolescents in Kenya’s government schools can understand, question and use artificial intelligence wisely. Led by Blooming World International, through the Regional Initiative for Skilling and Employment (RiSE) collective, it builds on RiSE’s work since 2020 to assess life skills and values and embed them in public education. AI is reaching Kenya’s classrooms faster than the learners furthest behind, their teachers or the education system are ready for it. RiSE’s household assessment of 45,000 adolescents found that only 5% of Kenyan young people are highly proficient in problem-solving and 10% in collaboration, and only 31% of children can use a computer or tablet. A learner who cannot weigh evidence or judge what is true is not helped by AI but exposed by it, and without deliberate action AI will widen gaps that already run along lines of poverty, geography, gender and disability. The initiative sets out to make sure the learners with the least are not left behind as AI changes how the world learns and works.

The initiative works with adolescents in Grades 7 to 9 of government junior schools in some of Kenya’s least-resourced counties, where poverty, distance, scarce devices and teacher shortages overlap. These include the arid northern and north-eastern counties of Turkana, Marsabit, Wajir, Garissa, Mandera, Samburu and West Pokot, home to pastoralist communities; Tana River, Kilifi and Kwale on the coast; Kajiado, home to Maasai communities; and rural Bungoma in western Kenya. It aims to reach more than 480,000 students in 2,550 schools, at least half of them girls, with particular attention to learners with disabilities. The Ministry of Education co-chairs the initiative’s steering committee, the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development co-designs the AI literacy framework, and county governments lead delivery. Strathmore University validates the tools, Pastoralists Women in Health and Education and Dupoto-e-Maa engage pastoralist and Maasai families, Blooming World International mobilises teachers and schools, and RELI Africa members carry the evidence to policymakers. Blooming World International serves as the backbone, and every partner works to one shared results framework.

The approach is simple: teachers lead, RiSE measures and government adopts. Together with teachers, adolescents and the curriculum institute, the collective is co-creating an open AI literacy framework, a teacher handbook and assessment tools, and testing them in pilot schools before taking them further. Master trainers certified through the RiSE Academy will cascade training through county education offices to STEM teachers, school leaders and system leaders, who bring AI literacy into lessons they already teach. Lessons use real AI output on paper and shared devices, so a school’s hardware does not decide which learners benefit. School learning communities help teachers keep up the practice, and parents are reached through local-language radio, feature phones and community sessions. RiSE’s assessment shows which learners are gaining and which are not, by gender, disability, location and pastoralist status, and partners review the data together every quarter to redirect support to those falling behind.

Once AI literacy is part of Kenya’s curriculum framework and the Ministry of Education’s quality assurance tool, it can be taught and measured with public funds in all 19,038 government junior schools, and the educators trained through the initiative stay in post. All tools, data and findings will be shared openly under a Creative Commons licence for ministries, teacher colleges, researchers and organisations across Africa facing the same challenge. RiSE’s ambition is that, by 2030, four million Kenyan learners have the life skills, values and AI literacy to shape the technology around them rather than be shaped by it.