A graduate of Cyberiad Labs’ first class brings its free AI course to her learners in Nigeria
LindaGift Awo took the course in Cyberiad Labs’ first class. Members of CodeCraft Forge’s free community start it on 2 November, and the scholars of her 500 Digital Futures Initiative will follow in a later class.
RALEIGH, N.C., and LAGOS, Nigeria, 29 October 2026. Cyberiad Labs today announced education partnerships with CodeCraft Forge and the 500 Digital Futures Initiative, two organisations LindaGift Awo leads in Lagos. She finished Cyberiad Labs’ course, Introduction to AI and LLMs (large language models), in its first class, and asked to offer it to both her communities. Members of CodeCraft Forge’s free community get 100 free places in the class that opens on Monday 2 November 2026. The 500 Digital Futures Initiative aims to sponsor 500 learners across Nigeria for digital-skills training, and its scholars will get free places in the first class that opens after they are selected. The course is online, part-time and four weeks long.
These places are added to the public ones, which are full for every class until the end of 2026. Cyberiad Labs plans to hold places for both organisations in later classes too.
CodeCraft Forge is a tech training company in Lagos, started in 2025, where LindaGift Awo is lead instructor. It sells mentor-led cohorts, groups of learners who start and finish together, in frontend and backend web development, Python, UI/UX engineering and illustration, built around real projects and a portfolio. Its latest cohorts opened in April 2026. Those paid cohorts are outside this partnership. CodeCraft Forge also runs a free community where LindaGift helps learners at no charge, and Cyberiad Labs’ places go to that community.
The 500 Digital Futures Initiative will select its first scholars and connect them to training in software development, UI/UX design, data, digital marketing, Python or AI, with mentoring and practical projects around it. LindaGift wants every scholar, whatever their track, to take Cyberiad Labs’ course as well.
LindaGift Awo is a product designer and frontend developer, and she mentors CodeCraft Forge’s learners herself. She studied English at Lagos State University and taught spoken English in Lagos schools from 2012 to 2022. She then learned software engineering on ALX’s programme, which she finished in 2023. Today she also leads product design at Yocheved Limited and teaches frontend development at HerTechTrail, and she has written curricula and books for learners.
“Designers, data analysts and marketers will all work with AI, so every learner should understand it, whatever their field,” said Julien Barbier, co-founder of Cyberiad Labs. “Nigerians are the largest group in our first class, more than 450 of its 1,005 learners. LindaGift is one of them, and now she’s bringing her learners with her.”
In the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, 86% of employers said they expect AI and information processing technologies to transform their business by 2030.
“I took the first class because my learners and I already use AI tools every day, and I wanted to understand how they really work, where they get things wrong and how to check them,” said LindaGift Awo, lead instructor at CodeCraft Forge and initiator of the 500 Digital Futures Initiative. “Whatever our scholars choose to study, AI will be part of their work. I want them to start knowing how it works and how to stay in charge of it.”
Cyberiad Labs’ Introduction to AI and LLMs teaches what AI is, how it works and where it fails. It needs no coding, and it is written for phones first: learners use a phone or a computer, with free tools only and no paid accounts or credit card. On the first day, they install a free AI model that runs on their own device, even when the internet connection goes down. Throughout the course, they practise checking its answers, asking for its sources and verifying them, and deciding for themselves when to rely on it. The course’s first class opened on 14 September with 1,005 learners from 51 countries, 95% of them in Africa. Learners rate its sessions 4.8 out of 5 on average.
“I learned to code on a tablet, so I know how much the device in your hand decides what you can learn,” said Youssef Charif Hamidi, co-founder of Cyberiad Labs. “Our course is free and uses free tools only, so it adds no cost to a scholarship.”
Members of CodeCraft Forge’s free community can ask for one of the 100 places through the community, which they can join from codecraftforge.com. The 500 Digital Futures Initiative will announce how to apply for its scholarships.
The course will be free for the learners of both organisations. These are Cyberiad Labs’ eleventh and twelfth education partnerships, and the second started by a graduate of the course, after Algorithmia SE.
About Cyberiad Labs
Cyberiad Labs teaches people to work with AI without letting it think for them. Those skills help people keep a job or find one, and help organisations adapt as AI changes their work. 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://www.cyberiadlabs.com
About CodeCraft Forge
CodeCraft Forge’s mission is to make quality tech education accessible to anyone, anywhere, and to give learners the skills and confidence to build and lead in the digital world. It trains beginners and career switchers, who learn by doing and grow in community. Its values are empowerment, growth, community and craftsmanship. https://codecraftforge.com
About the 500 Digital Futures Initiative
The 500 Digital Futures Initiative, started by LindaGift Awo, aims to help 500 intentional learners across Nigeria get past the financial and resource barriers to good digital-skills education. It will connect the learners it selects to structured training in areas such as software development, UI/UX design, data, digital marketing, Python and artificial intelligence. Around that training, it will give them a support system built on accountability, mentoring, practical projects, visibility and connections to employers. Its goal is to turn access to digital education into a way into work. lindagift0812@gmail.com
Contact information
Julien Barbier, co-founder, Cyberiad Labs, julien@cyberiadlabs.com
LindaGift Awo, lead instructor, CodeCraft Forge, and initiator, the 500 Digital Futures Initiative, lindagift0812@gmail.com
Sources
- World Economic Forum, “The Future of Jobs Report 2025: Drivers of labour-market transformation”, 7 January 2025.