"to bloom, to blossom, to open up" — Swahili
Your career conversation partner,
built for Africa's world of work.
Chanua is a free AI career guidance chatbot developed by the Human Sciences Research Council. Ask it anything about opportunities, skills, salaries, and pathways — and get answers grounded in real, up-to-date African labour market evidence.
Start a ConversationWhy Chanua Exists
Between ten and twelve million young Africans enter the workforce every year. Only about three million formal-sector positions are created in the same period. That gap is not a reason for pessimism — it is a reason to look wider. The vast majority of dignified, sustainable work in Africa happens outside the formal sector: in self-employment, micro-enterprise, gig work, seasonal trade, and community-based services. The problem is not a shortage of opportunity. It is a shortage of current, relevant information about where those opportunities actually are — and that is exactly what Chanua is designed to fix.
What You Can Do With Chanua
Chanua is built around a simple idea: career guidance should feel like a good conversation, not a form to fill in. Here is what you can do the moment you open it.
Curious about a job title you have seen advertised? Wondering whether your qualification opens doors you have not considered? Type the question you would normally feel awkward asking out loud, and get a straight, evidence-backed answer.
The Opportunities Grid on the home page shows colour-coded cards of real roles and pathways — from Wind Turbine Technician training in South Africa to Financial Inclusion Officer posts in Kenya. Tap any card to open a guided conversation about that exact opportunity.
Chanua sees the full picture of how Africans actually earn — not just the vacancies listed on corporate portals. Ask about entrepreneurial pathways, cooperative enterprises, gig platforms, and informal sector opportunities that most career tools simply ignore.
Tell Chanua what you are studying or what skills you have, and it will show you how those abilities translate across sectors. You may discover that your foundation in one area opens doors in two or three others you had not thought to look at.
Chanua supports eleven languages — Swahili, Amharic, Wolof, Twi, Akan, French, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sepedi, Afrikaans, and English. Switch languages from the top of the page and the entire experience follows, not just the chat replies.
At the end of any conversation, one click generates a visual summary of the guidance you received, rendered in the same colour system as the opportunities grid. Print it, send it to a mentor, or pin it somewhere useful — it is yours to take away.
Under the Hood
Chanua does not make things up. Every answer it gives is anchored to real, attributable claims drawn from a curated set of African labour market sources — refreshed every week. Here is how that works.
Community newspapers, national job portals, public sector bulletins, and Telegram groups where gig rates and training announcements are shared — Chanua reads where African work is actually discussed, not just where it is most easily documented.
Each piece of information is turned into a structured claim — a specific role, a qualification requirement, a named employer or training programme — tagged with its source, country, and the date it was captured.
Raw claims are distilled into clear, country-specific narratives covering sectors, skills in demand, entry pathways, and salary ranges — so the answer you receive is already organised, not a pile of raw search results.
When you ask a question, Chanua retrieves the most relevant synthesised evidence and builds its answer from that — grounded in what the sources actually say, traceable back to where the information came from.
The HSRC Refracted Economies Framework
Traditional career tools ask: "which industry do you want to work in?" That is a twentieth-century question. Africa's young people are constructing hybrid, purpose-driven livelihoods that cross sector boundaries all the time. The Refracted Economies Framework (REF), developed by the HSRC, asks a better question.
Instead of slotting roles into industry codes, the REF organises work by the kind of contribution it makes — to the economy, to communities, to people's wellbeing. Like light refracted through a prism, work that looks uniform reveals a full spectrum of purpose and value.
This reframing matters practically. A student interested in climate work can discover Green opportunities alongside relevant Silver (green manufacturing) and emerging entrepreneurial pathways — and see how a skill in one domain transfers into another. Every opportunity card in Chanua inherits its colour from its REF domain. Every infographic you generate is rendered in the same palette.
The Refracted Economies Framework is a novel analytical tool developed by the Human Sciences Research Council for understanding the full spectrum of economic contribution in Africa.
Coverage
Chanua currently covers five of Africa's most dynamic and diverse labour markets. Each has its own distinct opportunity landscape — and Chanua knows the difference. Tell it where you are, and it talks to you about your economy, not a generic one.
Supported Languages
Career guidance is only useful if you can read it. Chanua supports eleven languages so you can explore opportunities in the language that feels most natural to you.
You do not need to know exactly what you are looking for. Start with a question, a sector you are curious about, or just browse the opportunities grid. Chanua will meet you where you are.
Open Chanua