Grassroots ChatGPT Adoption in Banadir, Somalia's High Schools — A 315-Student Survey

With no government- or NGO-led AI-in-education programme yet operating in Somalia, researchers Abdirahman Osman Ali Baacil and Abdullahi Sharif of the Baacil Institute for Research and Development surveyed 315 high-school students across public and private schools in Somalia's Banadir region (which includes the capital, Mogadishu) using a structured 22-item electronic questionnaire, publishing results in the Horn of Africa Journal of Social Science (Vol. 4, No. 1) in March 2026.

This is entirely unmanaged, student-initiated use of general-purpose consumer chatbots, not a designed or governed educational intervention: there is no institutional data-protection policy, no teacher-training component and no scaling plan behind it.

64.8% of respondents reported already using AI tools for schoolwork, with ChatGPT dominating adoption at 92.1%. Among users, 84.4% said AI improved their understanding of school subjects, 79.1% reported a positive or very positive academic impact, and 49.8% cited problem-solving as the most-improved skill; 70.5% wanted continued and expanded AI use in their studies. 44.4% of students cited limited internet or device access as a barrier, 26.3% cited inaccurate AI information, and 23.8% found the tools hard to understand. Pearson's chi-square tests found no statistically significant differences in AI use by sex, grade level or school type.

The practice documents organic demand rather than an evaluated programme, and the self-reported academic-impact figures are students' perceptions, not measured learning outcomes.