South African ed-tech startup Buddy Learning is making high-quality academic support accessible and affordable to every learner via BuddyAI, a multilingual AI tutor available on WhatsApp.
Founded in 2022, Buddy Learning has a simple aim – to create opportunities through education. CEO and co-founder Tshaamano Mabuba grew up in the Madombhidza township in Limpopo province, where she experienced first-hand how access, language, and affordability shape educational outcomes.
“That lived experience drove me to build a solution that could scale,” she said.
At the core of the solution is BuddyAI, a WhatsApp-based AI tutor that allows students to ask questions, receive explanations, and practise through quizzes in their home language, aligned to the South African curriculum.
“Alongside this, we operate a marketplace of over 70 vetted tutors across South Africa and Botswana, providing personalised, one-on-one academic support,” Mabuba said.
She said there were three major barriers in education – cost, language, and access.
“Traditional tutoring is expensive and often inaccessible to the majority of students, while most digital solutions are not localised for African contexts, particularly in terms of language and curriculum alignment,” said Mabuba.
Buddy Learning addresses this by combining affordability, WhatsApp-based accessibility, and multilingual support across all 11 official South African languages. Mabuba said the startup operated alongside traditional tutoring services and ed-tech platforms like Siyavula and global tools such as Coursera.
“However, our differentiation lies in our WhatsApp-first approach, local curriculum alignment, and deep focus on language inclusion areas where global platforms typically fall short,” she said.
Given its hyperfocus on accessibility and affordability, it is perhaps no surprise that uptake has been strong and consistent.
“We have supported over 4,000 families through our tutoring platform, while BuddyAI has reached over 1,700 active users. To date, the AI has answered over 245,000 questions, with user retention rates around 90 per cent,” Mabuba said. “Importantly, we’ve seen measurable academic improvement, with approximately 90 per cent of learners improving their performance. The combination of affordability and accessibility has driven organic growth, particularly through word-of-mouth and school partnerships.”
The startup has been largely revenue-supported to date, generating income through its tutoring marketplace, where students pay per lesson or in packages. It is also in the process of introducing a subscription model for BuddyAI.
“While we are still in a growth phase and reinvesting heavily into product development, the business has demonstrated strong unit economics and a clear path to profitability as we scale,” said Mabuba.
That said, it is taking on some external funding, having recently been selected for the third edition of the Injini Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship in South Africa, through which it banked ZAR1.2 million (US$73,000) in equity-free cash.
Buddy Learning currently operates in South Africa and Botswana.
“Our immediate focus is deepening penetration in these markets while refining BuddyAI. However, the long term vision is pan-African expansion, particularly into regions with similar challenges around language diversity and access to education. Because our core product is built on WhatsApp, scaling into new markets is operationally efficient and highly feasible,” Mabuba said.
