Cyberiad Labs sets aside 500 free AI course places for Nairobi’s Ngao Labs
Ngao Labs grows only as fast as it can support its learners. Ngao Labs’ graduates, and the people waiting to join its next cohort, start Cyberiad Labs’ course on 2 November, and more will join future classes.
RALEIGH, N.C., and NAIROBI, Kenya, 28 October 2026. Cyberiad Labs and Ngao Labs today announced a partnership that gives Ngao Labs’ graduates, and the people on its waiting list for the next cohort of Foundations of Data Science and AI, Ngao Labs’ tuition-free programme, free places in Cyberiad Labs’ classes. It starts with 500 places in the class that opens on Monday 2 November 2026, with more in future classes. The course, Introduction to AI and LLMs, is online, part-time and four weeks long.
Ngao Labs’ places come on top of the public ones, which are full for every class until the end of 2026. This is Cyberiad Labs’ tenth education partnership, and its largest so far: no partner has had more than 250 places in a class before.
Oyori Obegi, a data analyst trained in applied statistics and computer science, started Ngao Labs in Nairobi in August 2025 and registered it as a Public Benefit Organization (PBO) in June 2026. Ngao Labs trains young Kenyans in data science and AI, tuition-free, and especially encourages women to apply. The 10-week programme takes learners from Python through machine learning, deep learning, generative AI and responsible AI. It ends with a capstone project that teams present to a panel of industry reviewers, and the best teams join Ngao Labs’ incubation programme.
The programme runs online but works like a school. Every day starts with a stand-up, a short morning team meeting. Attendance is tracked, and learners must attend at least 80% of sessions. They work in small teams, review each other’s code and help each other through problems. Ngao Labs has trained more than 100 graduates in three cohorts, and many come back as mentors for the next cohort. One of its first graduates now coordinates its mentorship and incubation programme.
Ngao Labs typically accepts 30 to 60 learners a cohort, so that every learner gets a mentor’s attention; its third cohort graduated 55. Learners are chosen through a selection challenge marked by Ngao Labs’ mentors. Its learners also train on DataCamp’s courses through DataCamp Donates, and take on Zindi’s data science challenges as part of the curriculum.
Knowing how to build AI and knowing when to trust it are two different skills. In Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, 84% of the developers who answered said they use AI tools or plan to. Yet more developers distrust the accuracy of those tools (46%) than trust it (33%). The Kenya AI Skilling Alliance (KAISA) was launched in October 2025 by the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) with Microsoft. It aims to train 1 million Kenyans in AI by 2027, and Ngao Labs is one of its trainers.
“At Ngao Labs, learners teach each other, and every one of them is seen every day,” said Julien Barbier, co-founder of Cyberiad Labs. “That is the hardest part of peer learning to get right. We learned it at Holberton, and Ngao Labs has done it in a year.”
“At Ngao Labs we shield the curious: we give people a safe place to learn, build and belong, and our mentors light the path,” said Oyori Obegi, founder and CEO of Ngao Labs. “Our graduates build and train models, and this course gives them, and the people waiting to join our next cohort, the habit of checking what an AI tells them before they act on it. That habit is what Africa’s next generation of ethical data and AI leaders needs.”
A learner only needs a phone or a computer to join. On the first day, every learner installs a small free AI model that runs on their own device, so they keep access to AI even when the internet connection goes down. From the first week, they see that the AI answering so confidently is a program predicting text, one piece at a time, and that it can be wrong. Throughout the course, they practise checking its answers, asking for its sources and verifying them, and deciding for themselves when to rely on it. Cyberiad Labs’ first class opened on 14 September with 1,005 learners from 51 countries, 95% of them in Africa. More than 150 of them are Kenyans, the second-largest group after Nigerians, and the class has rated its sessions 4.8 out of 5 on average.
“‘Ngao’ means ‘shield’ in Kiswahili,” said Youssef Charif Hamidi, co-founder of Cyberiad Labs. “With AI, the best shield is a habit: check what it tells you before you trust it. Ngao Labs’ graduates train models, so they already know a model can be confidently wrong. Our course turns that check into a reflex, for them and for everyone they teach.”
Ngao Labs’ graduates, and the people on its waiting list, register through a link Ngao Labs gives them. Other non-profits and foundations that do not 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 help organisations keep up 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 the 12-month ALX software engineering programme Julien led. 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 Ngao Labs
Ngao Labs is a non-profit dedicated to democratizing access to data science, AI, software development and other emerging digital technologies. Through inclusive, community-driven learning environments, Ngao Labs equips emerging talent with practical technical skills through tuition-free, peer-to-peer training programmes. https://ngaolabs.org
Contact information
Julien Barbier, co-founder, Cyberiad Labs, julien@cyberiadlabs.com
Oyori Obegi, founder and CEO, Ngao Labs, hello@ngaolabs.org
Sources
- Stack Overflow, “2025 Developer Survey: AI”.
- Microsoft Source EMEA, “KEPSA launches the Kenya AI Skilling Alliance (Kaisa): A national platform to accelerate inclusive and responsible AI adoption”, 29 October 2025.
- Kenya AI Skilling Alliance, “KAISA”.