Cyberiad Labs and Hyver Organization partner to teach AI to African university students
Hyver's student tech clubs bring together 7,830 students at 27 universities and higher-education institutes in six countries. The first 250 start Cyberiad Labs' AI course on 2 November.
RALEIGH, N.C., and LOMÉ, Togo, 15 October 2026. Cyberiad Labs and Hyver Organization today announced a partnership that will give Hyver's student members up to 250 free places in each of Cyberiad Labs' classes, starting with the class that opens on 2 November.
Hyver Organization is a non-profit network of student tech communities. Since January 2024, it has grown to 7,830 university students at 27 universities and higher-education institutes in Benin, Guinea, Kenya, Niger, Tanzania and Togo. On each campus, students represent Hyver and run its clubs, and volunteers teach in person and online. Hyver gives students what lectures often cannot: Tech Campus Clubs where they build together, an internship programme in which they gain real experience by contributing to open-source projects, an events platform for tech communities, and a call-for-speakers platform where they gain experience as speakers. It was founded by Agnilonda Pakou and Parfait Toke, two software engineers who run it outside their working hours, unpaid.
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. Hyver's places are in addition to the public ones. The public seats of the November class are already full.
“One of the best things that can happen to a teacher is to see a former learner return years later as someone who builds things,” said Julien Barbier, co-founder of Cyberiad Labs. “Agnilonda took the AI for Developers course on the ALX programme I led. Today he runs a company that builds AI data for African languages, and outside his working hours he and Parfait have built a network of almost 8,000 students. Nobody pays them to do it. Like 2APA, this partnership was started by someone I once taught, and I am very proud.”
Today's students will graduate into a job market that AI is already changing. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 says employers expect 39% of workers' core skills to change by 2030, and that AI and big data are the fastest-growing skills. In Microsoft and LinkedIn's 2024 Work Trend Index, 66% of leaders said they would not hire someone without AI skills. In Africa, more is at risk: according to the African Development Bank, about 12 million young people enter the labour market every year, for about 3 million jobs. Employers will look for graduates who can work with AI and check what it produces.
“With Hyver, we wanted students to stop waiting for a first job before they could say they had experience,” said Agnilonda Pakou, co-founder of Hyver Organization. “AI has changed what that experience must include. I took Julien's AI course at ALX in 2025, and it changed how I work: today I build AI for African languages. I want every student in our clubs, whatever they study, to understand these tools, use them well, and know when not to trust them.”
“Our clubs are run by students, for students,” said Parfait Toke, co-founder of Hyver Organization. “This partnership gives our campus leaders a course they can follow themselves and then share with their club, in person and online. We start with 250 students in November. Later, we want to reach every student in all of our universities.”
Cyberiad Labs' Introduction to AI and LLMs (large language models) teaches learners what AI is, how it works and where it fails. In the first week, they see that the system answering so confidently is a program predicting text, one small piece of text at a time, and that it can be wrong. Throughout the course, they practice checking its answers, asking for its sources and verifying them, and deciding for themselves when to rely on it.
The partnership starts with the class that opens on Monday 2 November 2026. The course, Introduction to AI and LLMs, is online, part-time and four weeks long, and it will be free for Hyver's members. This is Cyberiad Labs' third education partnership, after the Mandela AI Hub Foundation and 2APA (Association Africaine des Professionnels de l'Aéronautique).
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 Hyver Organization
Hyver Organization is a non-profit network of student tech communities across Africa. It connects 7,830 students at 27 universities and higher-education institutes in Benin, Guinea, Kenya, Niger, Tanzania and Togo through campus clubs, open-source internships, events and technical training, so they can connect what they learn in class with real-world software development. Its programmes include Tech Campus Clubs, the Tech Communities Clubs events platform, Open Source for All, the Voixel call-for-speakers platform and Tech Communities Day. https://www.hyver.org
Contact information
Julien Barbier, co-founder, Cyberiad Labs, julien@cyberiadlabs.com
Agnilonda Pakou, co-founder, Hyver Organization, partnership@hyver.org
Sources
- World Economic Forum, “The Future of Jobs Report 2025: Skills outlook”.
- Microsoft, “Microsoft and LinkedIn release the 2024 Work Trend Index on the state of AI at work”.
- African Development Bank, speech by President Akinwumi Adesina, 2025 Annual Meetings.