Why We Brought Secondary School Girls Together to Build AI-Powered Solutions to Real Problems

On the eve of Children's Day this year, 6 secondary school teams stood before a panel of judges, education officials, teachers and mentors in Lagos, Nigeria, ready to defend ideas and problems they had turned into AI-powered solutions.

This was the Tech4Dev AI Inter-District Secondary School Challenge, and the question behind it was simply, what would happen if girls were given the chance to engage with artificial intelligence not just as users of technology, but as problem-solvers?

The Gap We Wanted To Close

Every year, Tech4Dev carries out advocacy visits, where our team, Women Techsters Fellows and passionate volunteers visit schools and communities to give back and introduce girls to opportunities in technology.

In 2026, AI has become increasingly important, as it is already deciding who gets hired, who doesn’t, who gets seen and who gets left out. However, girls in underserved communities rarely get access to these tools, which means the problems closest to their daily lives, school safety, access for students with disabilities, gender-based violence, are the least likely to be addressed by the technology currently being built.

So we tested something different, instead of only encouraging girls to see themselves taking space in the tech industry, we wanted to teach them how to use these tools and ask them to use it to solve a relatable problem.

How The Tech4Dev AI Inter-District Challenge Was Structured

The Tech4Dev AI Inter-District Challenge opened with our Tech Girls Drive Advocacy that took place in March 2026 across public secondary schools in Lagos Education Districts II and IV, where Women Techsters Fellows and volunteer ran sensitization sessions on digital skills and AI. From there, each participating school nominated five girls, JSS1 to SS3, to go through a structured one-week training led by assigned Women Techsters Fellows and volunteers.

These girls were guided to identify a social issue in their own community, shape it into a clear problem statement, and design an AI-powered solution.

Through the Tech Girls Drive advocacy, we reached 31 schools through advocacy engagements, 27 of which progressed into the challenge itself. 135 girls went through training, supported by 27 teacher coordinators and 19 volunteers. And then, 6 schools made it through to the Grand Finale on May 26, presenting their work before representatives from the Lagos State Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, Lagos Education District II, their own teachers, and the mentors who had walked the journey with them.

What The Girls Built

The range of AI-powered solutions developed by the girls demonstrated not only creativity, but also a strong awareness of the real-world challenges around them.

Mende Junior High School, Maryland, won first place. They built Learning Without Limits, a platform that converts classroom notes into sign language videos, simplified visual explanations, subtitles and voice narration for deaf and hard of hearing students. The students had noticed that many of their fellow students with hearing disabilities struggle to follow lessons built around spoken explanation, and their goal was to make sure no student's access to learning depended on whether they could hear the teacher.

Onike Girls Junior High School, Iwaya, took second place with the Onike Girls Alarm Station, a safety app built around a one tap emergency button with live GPS tracking that will alert their school counselor. The students designed it to keep working even where network coverage fails, relaying signals through Bluetooth mesh until a connection returns, and disguised the app as a study timer so it stays invisible to an abuser who might check a student's phone.

Mende Senior High School, Maryland, placed third with SpeakSafe, an anonymous reporting platform built for students to report bullying without fear of retaliation, including from teachers or other authority figures. By pairing anonymity with AI-powered analysis, the team wanted to give students a way to speak up more.

What The Challenge Taught Us

This challenge revealed what is possible when girls are given the right tools, mentorship, and opportunities to innovate. They did not just learn about AI, they used it to identify real challenges, think critically, and built solutions that can make a meaningful difference in their communities.

As AI continues to shape the future and access across Africa it is important that students are not only prepared to use these technologies but empowered to shape them. The Tech4Dev AI Inter-District Secondary School Challenge is one step toward making that vision a reality, and we look forward to expanding the initiative to more schools and more communities,

The future of AI is not just about technology. It is about the people who use it to solve meaningful problems. What challenge in your community do you think technology could help address? We'd love to hear your thoughts.