Development Economics X

The end of the Cold War precipitated a wave of democratization across the African continent. However, a democratic decline, accelerated by the COVID-19 era, is underway in sub-Saharan Africa. More Africans live under fully or partially authoritarian states today than at most points in the last two decades. 

Democratic decline is a global problem. The"Global State of Democracy Report 2021," of the International IDEA, observes that the whole world has seen a decline in democracy. The report downgraded the freedom scores of 73 countries, representing 75 percent of the global population. 

It is estimated that 37% of the world's population lives under authoritarian rule (59 of the 167 countries and territories analyzed)². 

Global democracy’s decline includes undermining credible elections results, restrictions on online freedoms and rights, youth disillusionment with political parties as well as out-of-touch leaders, and intractable corruption. 

Improving civic education can help address some of these issues. Civic education is the process of educating citizens on their rights and responsibilities as members of a society. It helps citizens understand how their government works and how they can participate in it. It also helps citizens develop critical thinking skills and become more informed about political issues¹. 

Instead of the coups d'état of the Cold War era, these contemporary "democratic recessions'' are characterized by bottom-up processes with authoritarian leaders, especially in newer democracies, taking power through popular elections (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019). As such, the problem transcends improving election fairness and has most to do with improving democratic cultural values and civic education. Research suggests that the online environment can provide a platform for civic education interventions to strengthen democratic societies.

Development Economics X improves African civic education through a generative AI app that uses machine learning and natural language processing to provide personalized civic education. The Development Economics X product has three major components.

1) Connecting users with civic education content relevant for their countries and contexts.

2) Training educators by helping them integrate civic education into their learning materials for students.

3) Educating parents on how best to help the children both at home with their civic education learning and how best to engage with their children based on personalized civic education content.

We provide personalized education/training for both parents and teachers depending on who they are, who the student is, how they have behaved in the past, what the topic of conversation is between teachers and parents, what’s been learnt in the classroom and past behaviors. Educators and the parents get coaching within the platform, when it is actionable. For example, a community member may ask the app how best to explain a particular democratic cultural value or concept. Development Economics X  then suggests to the parent or teacher what actionable steps they can take to help the child or other citizen. Parents and teachers are also able to communicate in their own languages freely through Development Economics X.

Short video demo:

We are focused on young people across the African continent, starting with gandans, Ghanaians and Senegalese, as per our relationships with stakeholders. They are inadequately served by standard educational services in schools, on radio, and on television. Some may feel nervous about asking critical or pointed questions on relevant issues in schools, on radio, and on television due to cultural considerations of deference. A personalized app can better serve such needs and complement existing resources.

There is a need to provide access to improved civic action learning in a wide range of contexts: with educator support for classroom-based approaches, and community-building opportunities for out of school, community-based approaches.

Being a Ghanaian Team Lead, and having arisen from both rural and urban communities, I have the experience, relationships, data, and knowledge that are essential for developing solutions with measurable and sustainable impact. I was selected as a National Service Person by the Ghana Ministry of Education, which provides civic education resources to teachers across the country and have helped implement a national program.

I was also a teacher of high school grads in Accra, prior to grad school and a postdoc role in Berkeley, California, where I did research 8 years ago on how informative radio programming can improve civic education and political accountability (video). As part of that project, I did thousands of mobile phone and in-person surveys, which all inform the design of the app by integrating feedback from several communities. I also did research on corruption and the first experiment on whether higher salaries lessen corruption (video). This research collected data from across West Africa. Alas, we found that higher salaries led to worse corruption outcomes.

As such, the best approach may be to improve civic education outcomes, which is what Development Economics X aspires to do.

We have a working app that is able to answer qestions about civic education from all African nations in plain, easy-to-apprehend language with large language models. As such it falls in the Prototype rather than the Concept category.

Marketing, relationships with stakeholders and potential partners who believe in democratic cultural values in the space.

Our large language model-based app for civic education is innovative in many ways. It can help students learn about civic issues and government policies in an interactive and engaging way. It can also help students develop critical thinking skills by providing them with different perspectives on various issues. Additionally, it can help students learn how to communicate effectively and persuasively by providing them with opportunities to practice writing and speaking about civic issues.

Moreover, the app can be used to create personalized civic education learning experiences for students. It can adapt to the learning style and pace of each student, providing them with content that is tailored to their needs. This can help students learn more effectively and efficiently.

Finally, the app can be used to promote civic engagement among students offline. It can provide them with opportunities to participate in discussions and debates about civic issues, as well as opportunities to take action on issues that they care about.

We intend to grow the user base, starting with secondary schools we have relationships with in Ghana (Mfantsipim School and John Teye Memorial). We are also pursuing an online marketing model on social media as we intend for ads to pay for the platform to maximize reach. We intend for the app to transform lives by providing a space for people (especially young people) to feel more empowered with information that pertains to them and related to specific UN Sustainable Development Goals of interest to them.

For goal 16, "16. Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions", we will analyze text responses to see if people are increasingly better-informed (based on their line of questioning on the app) over time. We will do the same for Goals 10, 6, 4 and 1, which we appear to be prevalent, based on existing surveys across Africa.

We believe that the app will have a significant impact on democratic values, in the vein of this paper https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co...

That research finds that online civic education has a considerable effect on democratic citizenship, including increasing intended political behavior.

We expect a similar finding: users of the app will be more informed and ask more precise questions over time. We will let different users have very slightly different user experiences in ways that mimic the linked article in an experiment.

We are using a large language-model-based app to make civic education more accessible.

I am a Black Canadian with dual Ghana citizenship. We intend to emphasize ethnic minorities who are often not adequately served by civic education initiatives.

The app is based on a free model with ad revenue. I also provide consulting services for companies/governments that believe in democracy. This is mostly done remotely from Canada. I have given presentations to policy makers from 14 nations so far.

The goal for the app is to emphasize donations and grants, selling products or services, service contracts to governments, all of which should provide significant revenue over time. I also do research in development economics that will help financially.

I have done some independent consulting with Awaaz De, a tech company in India that does some work in the education space. I have been previously funded by the NSF, and USAID, and other agencies, although these are separate from the app.