Cyberiad Labs and the Mandela AI Hub Foundation to give Kenyan and African learners up to 250 free places a class in Cyberiad Labs' AI course

RALEIGH, N.C., and NAIROBI, Kenya, 1 October 2026. Cyberiad Labs and the Mandela AI Hub Foundation today announced a partnership that gives the Mandela AI Hub Foundation's learners free places in Cyberiad Labs' classes: up to 250 in selected classes, starting with 100 places in the class that opens on Monday 2 November 2026. The course, Introduction to AI and LLMs, is online, part-time and four-week long, and will be free for their learners. This is Cyberiad Labs' first education partnership.

The Mandela AI Hub Foundation is a non-profit with offices in Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Johannesburg, working to democratise AI education across Africa, with youth, women and small businesses at the centre of its programmes. Cyberiad Labs teaches people to work with AI while keeping their own judgment and their own voice. Its first class opened on 14 September with 1,005 learners from 51 countries, 95% of them in Africa, and Kenya is its second-largest group after Nigeria, with more than 150 learners.

The Mandela AI Hub Foundation's places come on top of the public ones. The public seats of the November class are already taken.

"When we launched on 14 September, we said we'd reach 1,000,000 learners by 2030 through partners, because two founders can't knock on every door," said Julien Barbier, co-founder of Cyberiad Labs. "The Mandela AI Hub Foundation already works in the classrooms, the youth programmes and the small businesses we can't reach from the USA. Their learners take the same course, pass the same quizzes and get the same certificate as everyone else, and it is free for them."

In its own announcement of the partnership, the Mandela AI Hub Foundation said it wants "a future where people are not simply consumers of AI, but capable professionals who understand how to work alongside it, question it, and use it to create value."

A learner only needs a phone or a computer to join the course. On the first day every learner installs a small free AI model that runs on their own device so they can have access to AI for free for the rest of their lives. Then they see from the first week that the thing answering so confidently is a program predicting text, one piece at a time, and that it can be wrong. Kariũki, a learner from Kenya, wrote after the first session: "I've been using AI, but I didn't know I had access to local AI that I can use at no cost. It's exciting to be able to ask questions without access to the internet." The first class has rated its sessions 4.8 out of 5 on average.

Additionally, the Mandela AI Hub Foundation will get its own dashboard, updated as its learners work: how many started, who is active and who is behind, how many passed each week's exam, and which countries they are in. It sees a learner's name only when that learner has agreed to share their record; everyone else is counted and never listed.

"We built the dashboard so the Mandela AI Hub Foundation can see how its learners are doing while the class is still running," said Youssef Charif Hamidi, co-founder of Cyberiad Labs. "We already encourage every learner who falls behind, but people listen more to someone they know. The Mandela AI Hub Foundation knows its learners by name, so when one of them stops in week two, somebody they trust can reach out and help them back in, and more of them finish the course. We give our partners what they need from the first day, and we keep talking with them the whole way, so the ones who want to take an active part can help their learners."

The Mandela AI Hub Foundation's learners register through a link Cyberiad Labs sends them. Other non-profits and foundations that don't charge their learners can ask for free places of their own at julien@cyberiadlabs.com.

About Cyberiad Labs

Cyberiad Labs teaches people to work with AI without handing it their thinking. Those skills help people keep a job or find one, and keep organisations relevant. It teaches learners directly, and works with schools, universities, companies, NGOs and governments.

Julien Barbier co-founded Holberton School, a software engineering school with no teachers, no lectures and no upfront tuition. It grew from one campus in San Francisco to 32 worldwide before it was acquired. He then led product and growth at ALX across its software engineering and applied AI programmes, where the number of learners went from a few thousand to more than 1.6 million. Before Holberton, he was the first head of marketing, growth and community at Docker.

Youssef Charif Hamidi is a full-stack engineer. He learned to code on Julien's 12-month ALX software engineering programme. He finished it on an Android tablet, because cerebral palsy limits him to about two words a minute on a computer keyboard. Previously, he built MathVellum, a maths editor for people who cannot hold a pen.

Home: https://cyberiadlabs.com

Mission: https://cyberiadlabs.com/mission.html

Partners: https://cyberiadlabs.com/partners.html

About the Mandela AI Hub Foundation

The Mandela AI Hub Foundation is an African-focused AI and digital transformation organization that helps individuals, businesses, and institutions understand and apply AI to real-world challenges. Through practical AI training, digital skills development, and tailored organizational solutions, Mandela AI Hub Foundation helps teams identify opportunities to automate processes, improve productivity, reduce operational costs, and build AI-ready capabilities. Having trained over 600 learners and supported more than 2,660 SMEs, the Foundation is committed to making AI practical, accessible, and relevant to Africa’s evolving digital economy. The Foundation also welcomes collaborations and partnerships with NGOs that want to foster Africa’s growth in the digital economy; they can reach it at partnership@mandelaaifoundation.org. https://mandelaaifoundation.org

Contact information

Julien Barbier, co-founder, Cyberiad Labs, julien@cyberiadlabs.com

Oscar Mwai, executive director, Mandela AI Hub Foundation, partnership@mandelaaifoundation.org