George Boateng: Ghanaian Computer Scientist Launches Smartphone-Based Coding App, ‘SuaCode’

In ensuring that learning how to code becomes much easier and fun, George Jojo Boateng, a Ghanaian computer scientist and social entrepreneur created SuaCode, a smartphone-based coding app. The app was launched on Google Play Store in January 2022, and has had some great reviews so far.

Boateng started SuaCode in 2017 as a graduate student at Dartmouth College, during Project iSWEST, an annual innovation bootcamp for high school students in Ghana organised by his education non-profit Nsesa Foundation. From 2018 to 2020, with four pilots, SuaCode had over 3,000 applicants from 69 countries, accepted over 1,000 students, with a 62% completion rate and alumni getting internships, jobs and studying computer science and engineering in top universities, including, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, and MIT.

In 2021, Boateng and cofounder Victor Kumbol improved on the idea and launched the startup, SuaCode.ai to transform SuaCode into a smartphone app, with the aim of teaching millions across Africa to code using smartphones and an AI teaching assistant, Kwame.

The SuaCode app enables users to learn how to code on their phone at anyplace, at anytime in a community of learners across the globe. Through Kwame, a bilingual AI Teaching assistant that Boateng built, the app presents lessons in English and French along with fun and hands-on coding exercises, quizzes and assignments. It also provides quick and accurate answers to students’ coding questions.

The app’s Automated Grading Software, AutoGrad, grades users’ assignments while checking for plagiarism and providing individualized feedback; and users receive a certificate of completion when they complete courses.

For his work on SuaCode.ai, George Boateng has been recognized by the MIT Technology Review as a Pioneer in the 2021 list of 35 Innovators under 35.

Currently pursuing his PhD in Applied Machine Learning at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, Boateng is also the President and co-founder of Nsesa Foundation, which aims at achieving the vision of creating an “Innovation Revolution” in Ghana. He was also, recently, appointed as a Visiting Researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Science department, where he will be exploring collaborations on AI-powered mobile heath research.