About Qalam
Qalam exists because a Somali child’s education should not depend on whether there is a good teacher in the room that morning, or whether the network is up.
What we built
Experienced Somali teachers recorded the national curriculum lesson by lesson. Their textbooks were scanned page by page and matched to those recordings, so the book and the video follow each other. Practice questions are written from what was actually taught. The result is a full school, in a file, that fits on a tablet.
Why offline comes first
Many of the families we serve have no usable internet at all. A feature that quietly needs the network is not a feature for them — it is a button their child taps that does nothing. So a Qalam device is not considered finished until its lessons, its textbook pages and its quizzes all work with the network switched off, tested on the device itself.
Who it is for
Students in Somalia and in the Somali region of Ethiopia; schools that want an examination system they can rely on; and parents who want to know how their child is doing without having to visit the school.
How we use AI
Carefully, and always anchored to real material. A question is only worth asking if answering it proves the student learned the subject, so the generator is forbidden from asking about a lesson’s title, its grade or what an exercise instructed. Every answer the tutor gives is tied to the page and the lesson it came from.
Partners
PhET Interactive Simulations
Interactive physics, chemistry, biology and maths simulations from PhET at the University of Colorado, for schools with no laboratory.
Hormuud Telecom
By mobile money from any Somali operator, inside the app. A daily package exists so that a family can buy only the days they will actually use.