Why SuaCode?": Understanding African Students' Motivations for Taking a Smartphone-Based Online Coding Course

Synthesis: Addo, Munagah, Kumbol, Uchidiuno and Boateng study why African students enroll in SuaCode, a smartphone-based online coding course (from the team behind the Kwame AI teaching assistant) addressing the fact that under 1% of African secondary-school leavers have fundamental coding skills. Understanding learner motivations informs the design of accessible, AI-supported MOOCs for low-resource contexts. The work speaks directly to Equity and Inclusive Learning, to broadening participation in CS Education, and to policy questions in Programming Language Policy as an AI Literacy Equity Problem: A 15-Nation Comparative Analysis; outcome evidence for AI-supported programming learning connects to A meta-analysis of the effect of generative AI on productivity and learning in programming.

Key Findings

• SuaCode is a smartphone-based online coding course whose enrollment motivations were studied among African students.
• Fewer than 1% of African secondary-school leavers possess fundamental coding skills, motivating accessible, low-cost routes into CS Education.
• Understanding learner motivations informs the design of accessible, AI-supported MOOCs for low-resource contexts.
• The course is developed by the team behind the Kwame AI teaching assistant, connecting motivation research to AI-assisted programming learning.

What this means for practice

• Learners. Enroll with intrinsic goals you actually care about, such as improving yourself, learning alongside like-minded people, and gaining skills to address societal problems, because free and accessible content was not a strong enough motivator on its own while 68.7% of coded responses named intrinsic reasons.
• Learners. Treat the peer community as part of the course rather than a side effect: learning with like-minded individuals was one of the intrinsic motives students named, so build study connections early in a CS Education MOOC.
• Learners. Take the smartphone route seriously when desktop access is out of reach, since the course is delivered entirely on phones and offers an entry point where the Digital Divide would otherwise exclude learners.

Limitations

• Preliminary analysis: the study codes a random sample of 450 of the 3,000+ open-ended survey responses, and the authors expect the full set to surface additional codes.
• Single instrument and single course: an open-ended response survey administered to self-identified African students already enrolled in SuaCode, with no comparison group, no follow-up, and no learning outcome measured.
• Motivations are not yet linked to outcomes: persistence and learning-gains analyses remained in progress, and subgroup differences by gender, region, and age had not been examined.
• Respondents are self-selected enrollees who chose to answer, so the findings speak for learners who both enrolled and responded in a context where less than 1% of African secondary-school leavers possess fundamental coding skills.

Citation

Michael Addo, Nana Maryam Munagah, Victor Kumbol, Judith Uchidiuno, George Boateng (2026). "Why SuaCode?": Understanding African Students' Motivations for Taking a Smartphone-Based Online Coding Course.