Efiwe has been selected to join the ninth cohort of the Builders of Africa’s Future (BAF) program, a prestigious accelerator run by the African Diaspora Network that unites visionary entrepreneurs building solutions for the African continent.
The African Diaspora Network (ADN) has accepted Efiwe into the ninth cohort of the Builders of Africa’s Future (BAF) program, recognising it as one of 13 enterprises with the vision, traction, and determination to drive meaningful change across Africa. The program kicks off on May 21, 2026, in collaboration with ADN’s training partner, the African Management Institute (AMI), and runs through late August.
Efiwe was selected for demonstrating a sustainable solution to a key community need, a clear ability to adapt and grow, and a compelling vision for scale, precisely the qualities BAF looks for in the entrepreneurs it backs. The program includes monthly training sessions, access to an online learning platform, and a dedicated mentor relationship for each participating founder.
For Efiwe, this recognition arrives at a moment of significant momentum. Since launching on August 16, 2025, the platform has grown to more than 11,000 learners across 139 countries, been shortlisted for the 2026 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation by the Royal Academy of Engineering, and been recognised by the International Telecommunication Union as one of the world’s most innovative AI education startups. The BAF cohort adds another layer of institutional validation to a platform that has, in less than a year, demonstrated what it looks like to build coding education from the ground up for people who have historically been excluded from it.
The BAF advisory committee cited Efiwe’s vision in creating a sustainable solution to a key community need, its demonstrated traction, and its clear goals to scale. Each of these speaks directly to what makes Efiwe different from the broader landscape of coding education platforms.
The community need Efiwe addresses is not a niche one. Over 4 billion people worldwide primarily rely on smartphones as their main computing device. Most of them live in regions where internet is expensive, unreliable, or both. Traditional coding platforms were built for a different user entirely, one with a personal laptop, stable broadband, English fluency, and money for subscriptions. Everyone outside that profile was, in effect, locked out of one of the most economically transformative skills of the modern era.
Efiwe was built to close that gap. The platform runs entirely on basic smartphones, works completely offline once loaded, supports 189 languages, and is free at its core. Its AI tutor delivers personalised, instant feedback on every coding challenge, not generic hints, but feedback shaped by how long a learner has been stuck, what mistakes they have made before, and how they are progressing in real time. The result is a completion rate that stands in stark contrast to the industry norm: while the typical online coding course loses 70–80% of its learners before they finish, every person in Efiwe’s focus group completed the entire HTML course. 100% said they would recommend Efiwe to a friend.
The traction is equally clear. Within two weeks of launch, Efiwe had attracted over 2,000 active users from 76 countries. By December 2025, the platform had reached 8,500 learners. It is now past 11,000, with Nigeria and India leading in adoption. The platform has completed successful school pilots in Uttarakhand, India and Lagos, Nigeria, launched a structured partnership with Teach For Nigeria across 10 schools in Lagos and Ogun State, and expanded its reach into Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, allowing learners to access the full coding curriculum without downloading anything at all.
The goals to scale are built into the architecture of the platform itself. Efiwe’s Group Accounts and Open API allow schools, NGOs, bootcamps, and organisations to run structured, measurable coding education at scale without a single computer lab. Partners serving communities in Nigeria, Kenya, India, Brazil, and beyond can deliver the full Efiwe experience in their learners’ own languages without building any translation infrastructure themselves.
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