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These are starter problems you can pick from. Your team can also bring your own idea for a Sierra Leone problem and build that instead.
Select
Five problems below are marked Select. These are the ideas teams have chosen to build during the programme.
Your own idea is welcome
You do not have to choose from this list. If your team has a strong idea that helps people in Sierra Leone, work on that. The project must be new work for this programme, not an old or existing solution.
Filter by category
53 problems
Education
Students often struggle to keep track of homework, deadlines, learning materials, and feedback from teachers. Teachers may also find it difficult to monitor which students have completed assignments and which students need additional support. At the same time, parents may have limited visibility into their children's academic progress and upcoming assignments. The lack of a centralized system connecting teachers, students, and parents can lead to missed deadlines, poor communication, and unnecessary academic stress.
What to build: Give teachers, students and parents one place for assignments, deadlines, materials, feedback and completion status.
Civic
Many communities, organisations, and individuals are willing to volunteer their time and skills, but there is often no efficient way to connect volunteers with organisations and community projects that need their support. This can result in volunteer opportunities going unnoticed while organisations struggle to find suitable people to help with their activities. The absence of an organized platform for discovering, matching, and coordinating volunteer opportunities creates a gap between people who want to contribute and communities that need support.
What to build: Match volunteers with organisations and community projects by skills, location and availability.
Health
Many young people enter puberty without having access to clear, reliable, age-appropriate information about the physical, emotional, and social changes they are experiencing. Cultural barriers, embarrassment, misinformation, and limited access to trusted educational resources can make it difficult for young people to ask questions or understand what is happening to their bodies. This lack of accessible and trustworthy information can lead to confusion, fear, stigma, and unhealthy decisions.
What to build: Provide clear, age-appropriate puberty information that young people can trust and explore privately. Do not diagnose or replace health professionals.
Jobs and Opportunities
Many students and young people want to develop skills that will help them succeed academically and professionally, but they often lack a clear understanding of which skills they need, how to prioritize them, and how to track their progress. Without structured goals and a personalized development plan, learning can become inconsistent and difficult to measure. This makes it harder for young people to identify skill gaps, stay motivated, and prepare themselves for future education or employment opportunities.
What to build: Help students identify skill gaps, set goals and track a personal development plan.
Education
Many schools rely on manual or disconnected processes to manage student records, attendance, academic information, communication, and administrative activities. This can make it difficult for administrators and teachers to access accurate information quickly and can create unnecessary paperwork, delays, and errors. Parents and students may also have limited access to important school information. The absence of a centralized digital administration system can reduce efficiency and make it harder for schools to effectively manage their day-to-day operations.
What to build: Give schools one digital place for student records, attendance, academics, communication and day-to-day administration.
Agriculture
Farmers and young produce sellers may hear different prices for the same crop in nearby markets. Without an easy comparison, they may sell too cheaply or travel to the wrong market.
What to build: Compare recent market prices and estimate a fair price range.
Agriculture
General weather reports do not always explain what rain or heat means for a particular crop. Farmers need simple guidance on when to plant, water or harvest.
What to build: Combine local weather, crop type and season to give simple activity reminders.
Agriculture
Leaves and fruits can show spots, colour changes or damage that farmers do not recognise early. Waiting too long can allow a pest or disease to spread.
What to build: Compare an uploaded crop photo with labelled examples and show verified next steps.
Agriculture
Fruit, vegetables and fish can spoil before reaching buyers, especially when storage and transport are limited. Families lose food and income when they cannot judge spoilage risk.
What to build: Estimate spoilage risk from product type, time, weather and storage conditions.
Agriculture
Students helping with school gardens or family farms may not know where to find suitable seeds, tools, training or youth-friendly farming support. Notices are scattered and may arrive after deadlines.
What to build: Match a crop, district, age and stated need with verified inputs or support.
Civic
Students and residents see potholes, blocked drains, broken lights or damaged public facilities. Reports may be repeated, incomplete or sent to the wrong place. After an issue is reported, the community may not know whether anyone accepted the report or completed the repair. This reduces trust and encourages repeated complaints.
What to build: Classify reports, detect duplicates, group them by location and urgency, then link reports with updates, photos, repair status and flag overdue cases.
Civic
Students hear promises about classrooms, toilets, water points, roads or youth centres but may not know the budget, deadline or progress. Without a simple tracker, they cannot compare promises with what was delivered.
What to build: Summarise project notices and updates, then flag missing or late progress.
Civic
Students and families may need birth certificates, identification or other documents for school, examinations and applications. They can waste time visiting the wrong office or arriving without the correct requirements.
What to build: Answer from verified official information and create a service checklist.
Civic
Schools and youth groups may collect many suggestions, but leaders cannot read and compare every comment. Important ideas can be missed.
What to build: Group similar ideas and produce a balanced summary for human review.
Business
Small shops and student businesses may keep sales and expenses in memory or on paper. They cannot easily tell whether they made a profit or lost money.
What to build: Turn uploaded voice notes or receipt photos into simple sales and expense records.
Business
A shop may run out of popular items while keeping products that are not selling. Owners often decide what to buy again without enough information.
What to build: Learn from past sales and suggest which items may need restocking.
Business
Young sellers may set a price without adding the cost of materials, transport and other expenses. A product can sell well while still losing money.
What to build: Learn from past costs, sales and market prices to recommend a profitable price range.
Business
Customers may give comments through messages, voice notes or short reviews. Small businesses struggle to identify the most common complaints and requests.
What to build: Group customer comments into themes and summarise what should be improved.
Business
School clubs, youth groups and family osusu schemes may record contributions on paper or in messages. Missing or conflicting entries can cause arguments and make it difficult to know who has paid.
What to build: Turn voice or text entries into records and flag missing or conflicting payments.
Education
Students may not have a tutor after school and can struggle to find trusted curriculum-based explanations online. They need one simple learning platform that works well on phones and uses little data.
What to build: Answer curriculum-based questions and generate simple explanations and practice.
Education
Students may practise BECE or WASSCE questions without knowing why an answer is wrong. Repeated mistakes remain hidden.
What to build: Mark practice answers, explain mistakes and recommend the next topic to study.
Education
Many students study only the subjects they enjoy or wait until examinations are close. They need a realistic plan based on available time and weak topics.
What to build: Create and adjust a weekly study plan from subjects, goals and quiz results.
Education
A teacher may see the class score but not the exact concepts most students misunderstood. This makes targeted revision difficult.
What to build: Analyse quiz answers and group common mistakes by topic.
Education
Teachers have limited time to prepare curriculum-aligned lessons, examples, classroom activities and quizzes for different ability levels. Students benefit when lessons include clearer and more varied practice.
What to build: Draft curriculum-aligned lesson plans, examples, classroom activities and quizzes for teacher review.
Energy
Power cuts can interrupt homework, phone charging and school activities. Individual reports do not show which places or times are affected most often.
What to build: Group outage reports and show patterns by location, date and duration.
Energy
Lights, fans and other appliances may remain on when they are not needed. Schools and homes spend more money and have less power for important tasks.
What to build: Analyse user-entered appliance and usage records and suggest where energy is wasted.
Energy
Families and schools may want enough solar power for phones, lamps, tablets or laptops used for learning. Students need a simple way to compare these devices and estimate a suitable small setup.
What to build: Use a device-and-hours form and example setups to recommend a suitable size range.
Energy
A phone may charge slowly, a lamp may stop working or a solar battery may drain too quickly. Students and families need a simple way to describe the problem before visiting a technician.
What to build: Analyse photos and selected symptoms, then prepare a report and technician referral.
Energy
Students often depend on a limited battery or charging time for phones, lamps and learning devices. Poor charging choices can leave important devices unavailable.
What to build: Plan charging times from user-entered battery levels, available power and priorities.
Health
A student or family may travel to a clinic that does not provide the needed service or is closed. This wastes money and delays help.
What to build: Match a stated need with verified nearby health services and opening times.
Health
Teenagers may receive confusing or false information about puberty, sexual health, nutrition and substance use. They need private access to trusted information.
What to build: Answer age-appropriate questions using approved health content and show sources.
Health
Stress, grief, bullying and examination pressure can affect students, but they may not know whom to talk to. Some avoid asking for help because of stigma.
What to build: Recognise concerns in a private check-in and direct users to trusted human support.
Health
Some students miss lessons because they lack clear menstrual-health information, supplies or school support. Embarrassment can stop them from asking questions or seeking help.
What to build: Answer questions from approved content and match students with available menstrual-health and school support services.
Health
Medicines and first-aid supplies kept at school or home can pass their expiry date without anyone noticing. Students helping to check a first-aid box need an easy way to record dates and receive reminders.
What to build: Read dates from label photos, organise the first-aid list and send replacement reminders.
Transport
Students and families may not know whether an okada or poda-poda fare is fair for a route. Disagreements make travel costs unpredictable.
What to build: Estimate a fare range from route, distance, time and recent verified fares.
Transport
Passengers often do not know which route is faster or when transport is likely to arrive. They can be late for school or wait in unsafe places.
What to build: Estimate travel and arrival times from route and recent journey information.
Transport
Road hazards that affect transportation, such as potholes, damaged bridges, fallen trees, missing road signs and flooded roads, may be reported late or several times. Missing locations make repairs harder to prioritise.
What to build: Identify hazards in uploaded photos, capture map locations and merge duplicate reports.
Transport
The shortest route to school may have dangerous crossings, speeding traffic or poor lighting. Students and parents need safer choices.
What to build: Score route risks and suggest safer walking or transport options.
Transport
Traffic near school entrances can become crowded and dangerous at opening and closing times. Schools may not know the worst locations or periods.
What to build: Find traffic hotspots from reports, counts or map data and show peak times.
Inclusion
A building may be called accessible but still lack a ramp, suitable toilet or clear entrance. People need details that match their own mobility or access needs.
What to build: Extract accessibility features from reports and match places to a user's needs.
Inclusion
Some learning materials have small text, difficult words or images without explanations. Students with visual, reading or learning difficulties can be left behind.
What to build: Convert material into larger text, simpler language, audio or image descriptions.
Inclusion
Deaf and hard-of-hearing students may miss spoken instructions and class discussions. This affects participation and learning.
What to build: Turn live or uploaded classroom speech into captions and short summaries.
Inclusion
Formal English and text-heavy notices can be difficult for people who prefer Krio or audio. Important information then reaches fewer people.
What to build: Explain verified information in plain English, Krio or speech.
Inclusion
Families may not know where to find assistive devices, inclusive education or disability support. They can contact several organisations without finding the right service.
What to build: Match a person's stated need and location with verified support services.
Jobs and Opportunities
Students may know the subjects they enjoy but not which careers use those subjects. They also need to understand the skills and training each path requires.
What to build: Match interests and school subjects with career options and explain the steps.
Jobs and Opportunities
Scholarships, school competitions, youth programmes and short internships are posted in many places. Students can miss deadlines or apply for opportunities that do not accept their age.
What to build: Verify and recommend opportunities by age, school level, interests and location.
Jobs and Opportunities
A student may want a career but not know which skills to develop first. Long lists of courses can make the choice confusing.
What to build: Compare current skills with a chosen goal and create a simple learning plan.
Jobs and Opportunities
Students often have school projects, volunteering or practical experience but no CV or portfolio. They find it hard to explain what they can do.
What to build: Turn activities and project evidence into a clear CV and skills portfolio.
Jobs and Opportunities
Interviews and presentations can be difficult when students have little chance to practise. They need useful feedback without embarrassment.
What to build: Run practice questions and give feedback on clarity, relevance and confidence.
Justice
Young people may not clearly understand their rights, responsibilities and school rules. This can make it difficult to recognise unfair treatment or make a proper complaint.
What to build: Explain verified rights and responsibilities in simple, age-appropriate language.
Justice
Cyberbullying, impersonation, online scams and school-related complaints affect teenagers, but many do not know what evidence to keep, where to report the problem or how to follow up afterwards. This confusion can discourage students from seeking help or checking the progress of their case.
What to build: Classify the incident, provide safe verified reporting steps, explain the reporting process, track safe status updates and prompt trusted-adult follow-up.
Justice
A student or family may need legal aid, child-protection help or a trusted reporting service. The correct organisation is not always easy to identify.
What to build: Match the issue and location with verified legal-aid or protection services.
Justice
Students may be asked to accept school forms, online terms, club rules or simple work agreements without understanding the important conditions. Difficult language can hide responsibilities, costs or risks.
What to build: Highlight key terms and explain them in age-appropriate plain language.