product system
DialAI
An AI assistant that reaches people over USSD, SMS and voice rather than the internet — health information, translation and practical guidance on a basic phone. First place at Africa's Talking BuildWithAI Lagos.
Team build at Codedevs
Most AI assistants assume a smartphone and a data plan. DialAI assumes neither. It runs over USSD and SMS so that someone on a feature phone with no internet can still ask a question and get a useful answer.
That constraint drives the design. USSD sessions are short and character-limited, so answers have to be compressed without becoming useless, and the model has to be orchestrated behind a queue that tolerates a telecom protocol rather than an HTTP request.
What this record says
Problem: AI assistance is unavailable to anyone without a smartphone and a data plan, which is a large share of the people who would benefit most from it.
Audience: Feature-phone users in low-connectivity areas needing health information, translation or guidance.
Contribution: Team build at Codedevs; the competition entry was a shared effort.
Status: Hackathon build. Public repository; the original demo deployment is offline.
System decisions
- Target USSD and SMS first so no internet connection is required
- Queue model calls behind the telecom session rather than blocking on them
Next improvement: Redeploy a working demo so the flow can be tried rather than described.
Evidence and sources
Public repository under the Codedevs organisation Open source
1st place, Africa's Talking BuildWithAI Lagos - Built as a Codedevs team entry; the commit history is attributed to teammates. The original demo deployment is offline.