SkillBridge: AI-Powered Exam Prep for African High-School Students

A mobile app that turns a phone into a curriculum-aligned study partner. Built for students in Ethiopia preparing for national exams, then expanded to high-schoolers across 20+ African countries.

Role: AI Software Engineer (backend), covering the AI tutor chatbot, exam-generation services, content APIs, and the backend behind the Flutter clients on Android and iOS.

The problem

Most high-school students across Ethiopia and neighboring countries prepare for national exams with outdated printed material and little personalized feedback. Quality prep is concentrated in urban centers and priced out for most families.

What we built

• Curriculum-aligned notes: structured study notes mapped to the national syllabus, served through a content API and rendered natively in the app.
• Mock exams: generated and scored per subject, with explanations for every wrong answer.
• AI tutor chatbot: OpenAI-backed Q&A grounded in the course material, tuned for high-school reading level and the student's specific curriculum.
• Adaptive quizzes: difficulty shifts with the student's running accuracy and weak topics, so revision stays useful instead of too easy or overwhelming.

Architecture

• Backend (Python): content, exam, and chat services exposing REST endpoints for the Flutter apps.
• AI layer: OpenAI API for the tutor and exam variants, with prompt templates tied to the syllabus taxonomy.
• Mobile (Flutter): a single codebase shipped to both stores, optimized for low-bandwidth environments.

Outcome

• 1,000+ downloads in the first release cycle.
• Reach across 20+ African countries within the first months.
• A stable content pipeline the team can extend with new subjects without engineering work on every update.

Links: skillbridge.academy · Google Play