Today, we’re sharing something special. Not our usual monthly highlights, but something more foundational: a fresh look at the Kabakoo vision! 🚀

The youth livelihoods challenge here in West Africa is profoundly complex. Let’s be real: simple, one-off solutions just don't cut it. Lasting change demands more. That’s why Kabakoo consciously employs a ‘multi-lever’ strategy, integrating tech & mobile access with deep community engagement, forging systemic partnerships (government/TVET), targeting priority sectors, and exploring innovative migration pathways. Acting holistically isn’t just an option; it feels essential to make meaningful progress.

Explaining the synergy of such integrated work isn’t always simple! We’ve shared knowing smiles with partners who’ve said their biggest ‘aha!’ moment – truly grasping how all the pieces of our work synergize – came months after deciding to collaborate with us. Another, initially rejecting our proposal as too unrealistic, became a champion after experiencing our work firsthand in Bamako – eventually inviting us to shape their team’s strategy.

These moments didn’t just highlight the need to better articulate what we do; they affirmed the inherent complexity of tackling livelihoods holistically and the iterative journey required to convey it effectively.

Guiding us through this complexity is our commitment to impact that scales effectively, driven by evidence. We are constantly testing, iterating, learning from data, field realities, and invaluable partner insights. And yes, learning sometimes involves a many stumbles. This relentless journey of refinement shapes not just what we do, but sharpens how we articulate the ‘why’ behind it all.

We do believe that everything great ought to be simple. And we also believe true simplicity isn’t superficial: it’s the hard-won clarity that emerges after wrestling with complexity.

So today, as we look towards scaling our impact and deepening partnerships, we are genuinely excited to share the latest articulation of our vision, sharpened by our work, learnings, and experiences.

This journey is fundamentally collaborative. We want to extend huge thanks to our incredible community of learners, current and former colleagues, friends, supporters, and partners for investing trust, financial resources, insights, energy, and hope alongside us. We truly appreciate you! And we are confident that the most impactful part of the journey is still ahead.🙏🏿

We invite you to explore the Kabakoo vision below: our refined understanding of the path towards shared prosperity. 👇🏿

P.S.: If there is any edition of our newsletter you would want to share with your people for them to share with their people, it’s surely this one!

Kabakoo’s Highdigenous vision: A new path to prosperity for millions

Africa’s greatest asset—and challenge—today is its youth. Each year, hundreds of millions of young Africans come of age bursting with creativity and ambition, yet only a tiny fraction can find a formal job. In countries like Mali, 300,000 youth enter the labor market annually for just 15,000 formal jobs. The math simply doesn’t add up. Little wonder that across Sub-Saharan Africa over 85% of people make a living outside formal employment. In Kenya, this figure is as high as 95% of young people working in the so-called “informal” sector. For decades, policymakers and development agencies have preached formalization as the cure, urging youth to get diplomas, start registered businesses, or wait for industrial jobs. But what if this one-size-fits-all approach is missing the mark? What if informality is not a problem to eliminate but a reality to build upon, a wellspring of untapped skills and innovative value creation? It’s time to confront the paradox: Africa’s youth are innovating and hustling in the margins, while legacy systems keep training them and stewarding them towards an economy that no longer exists, and might have never existed in their context. We need a radical new model that meets young Africans where they are, equips them for the world as it is, and helps them create the future as it could be.

Beyond the formal vs. informal binary

Crucially, this new approach must break out of old binaries. It’s not about choosing “modern” over “traditional”, or formal schooling over informal know-how. In fact, the distinction itself is a false dichotomy. The ingenuity we see in Africa’s informal economies—young people repurposing scrap parts into machines, communities solving problems collaboratively—is innovation. Period.

These entrepreneurs with or sans diplomas or degrees are resourceful individuals navigating complex socioeconomic landscapes with remarkable skill and grit. They already practice the much-vaunted “21st-century skills” (collaboration, creativity, problem-solving…) because daily life demands it. Meanwhile, indigenous knowledge systems, from agriculture to architecture, hold solutions refined over centuries. For too long, colonial-era education models dismissed this local wisdom as second-class, pushing a top-down, imported curriculum irrelevant to local needs. The result is generations of youth educated yet unemployable, taught everything except how to improve their own communities. It’s time to flip the script.

And this need for locally relevant solutions is made critically urgent by the escalating climate crisis, particularly acute in the Sahel where temperatures are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average, profoundly impacting agriculture, resources, and livelihoods. Ignoring local knowldeges and context is no longer just ineffective; it’s existentially risky.

What if we could blend the best of both worlds – the connectivity and scale of emerging technologies with the context-rich knowledge of communities?

Imagine an upskilling program that treats a carpenter in a Bamako suburb with the same respect as a software engineer, a system that treats “informal” not as a stigma but as a starting point for innovation. This is exactly the ethos of Kabakoo Academies’ vision. Based in Mali, we are a learning initiative calling ourselves “places of non-duality” – where ancestral crafts stand shoulder-to-shoulder with cutting-edge tech, and where endogenous (local) knowledge actively converges with global knowledge. By rejecting the false choice between traditional and modern, Kabakoo posits a third way: a “highdigenous” approach that is both highly technological and indigenously grounded.

A Highdigenous model: mobile meets community

At the heart of Kabakoo’s model is this hybrid approach that combines mobile technology with community-based learning. Rather than build a conventional school or running traditional skilling programs, Kabakoo crafts a learning ecosystem that is part digital platform, part on-the-ground community hub. Our flagship programs often involve structured cohorts (e.g., engaging learners through biweekly, 90-minute hybrid sessions over four to six months), blending rich content delivered online and in-person. On one hand, there’s a mobile learning platform connecting thousands of youth to courses, mentors, rich media content, and AI support wherever they are. This means a youth in a remote town can access tutorial videos, join design challenges, or get feedback from expert mentors, both human and AI-based, right from their phone. On the other hand, Kabakoo emphasizes in-person collaboration and local context. Learners are organized in communities, i.e. cohorts of peers and local facilitators who meet in co-learning spaces or informal workshops to build projects together. Every learning module is project-based and focused on solving real-life problems in the learners’ environment. It’s not abstract theory; it’s not mere hands-on creation. It’s reflective, collaborative value creation.

• Community mentorship: Each learner is supported by both local and global mentors (including artisans, entrepreneurs, technologists, elders), peer collaoration within cohorts, and dedicated AI-agents accessible via the app and integrated tools like WhatsApp. Handling thousands of queries monthly, these AI mentors offer resources, advice, validate portfolio tasks, and provide personalized feedback on assignments. This ensures guidance rooted in local reality and responsive, scalable support enhanced by cutting-edge knowledge.
• Mobile access, sector relevance, low barrier: Content and coaching delivered through a lightweight mobile app and WhatsApp means no fancy campus is required to start learning. Youth from all educational backgrounds can join – no diploma needed. (In fact, around 20% of Kabakoo learners didn’t finish high school, yet that doesn’t hinder their success.) Urban and semi-urban youth from all backgrounds join our learning ecosystems, developing skills directly relevant to local economic opportunities through focused tracks like Agriculture & Food Processing, Regenerative Construction, and Creative Industries. This mobile-first, sector-aligned approach makes quality upskilling attainable even for those normally left out.
• Blending tech and indigenous knowledge: Kabakoo’s curriculum actively bridges high-tech skills with indigenous practices. In a Kabakoo course on regenerative construction, for example, young Malians are reviving traditional clay and plant-fiber building techniques and enhancing them with contemporary tools. They learn to design beautiful, cool houses using local earth—knowledge their grandparents had—while employing 3D-printing and sensor tech to improve structural strength and sustainability. This isn’t a sentimental return to the past; it’s about updating proven local solutions with new innovation. (An MIT researcher admiringly dubbed this fusion “

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Another Kabakoo project invites master craftswomen from rural areas into an urban makerspace. In one case, 63-year-old Samaou Touré, an expert in plant-based textiles from northern Mali, took her first-ever trip to the capital to join Kabakoo’s innovation residency. There, over a few days, she worked alongside urban youth and international experts, leveraging tools like digital design software and augmented reality to explore how to increase the productivity in her value chain. The result: new marketable prototypes that blend her cuturally embedded techniques with contemporary design, and a two-way transfer of knowledge: older experts learning about tech, youth learning about heritage. And concrete paths toward economic value creation and shared prosperity.

• “Learn and Launch” philosophy: The goal is not just to impart skills for their own sake, but to enable tangible economic opportunities. Kabakoo learners don’t simply earn a certificate; they build something – a prototype, a piece of content, a digital marketing campaign, a piece of software, a community project – that can directly generate income or solve a local challenge. The program’s structure encourages learners to turn their projects into startups, social enterprises, or new services. In fact, several Kabakoo learners have already used their project experience as a springboard to launch their own ventures or secure jobs in emerging industries. From low-tech solutions for crop irrigation to eco-friendly construction firms, these outcomes illustrate that given the right support, Africa’s youth can create jobs for themselves and others rather than waiting for jobs to appear. It’s learning that immediately feeds into livelihood.

This unique blend – part tech incubator, part vocational training, part cultural revival – is what makes Kabakoo a trailblazer. It feels less like a traditional upskilling program and more like a accelerator for productivity embedded in the community. Learning happens through “making” and “problem-solving” together, which cultivates precisely the mindset young people need to navigate an uncertain future. Kabakoo explicitly trains for adaptability and agency: growth mindset, grit, collaboration, and design thinking are core to the pedagogy. In short, it’s preparing youth not for the jobs of the 20th century, but for the opportunities they themselves will create in the 21st.

Critically, addressing Africa’s vast, highly contextual, and complex livelihoods challenge demands such a multifaceted response. Grounded in our ‘Highdigenous’ philosophy and evidence-guided mindset, Kabakoo’s unique strength lies in strategically pulling multiple levers simultaneously: combining deep, locally-anchored community engagement (in-person lever) with scalable learning technology and mobile access (tech-enabled lever), forging systemic partnerships with government and TVET institutions (gov/policy/TVET lever), targeting training towards priority economic sectors (priority sector lever), and even developing innovative migration pathways (migration lever). This integrated, multi-lever approach, essential for achieving significant results yet rare amongst livelihood initiatives, is key to unlocking substantial economic prospects for youth in West Africa and beyond.

From local impact to millions

The big question: can this model improve the lives of not just a few cohorts, but millions of young people? All evidence suggests it can – and it’s already on its way. Kabakoo is designed for impact at scale. What started in one pilot co-learning space in Bamako is rapidly evolving into a pan-African movement of highdigenous learning. Kabakoo’s platform has reached youth well beyond Bamako, tapping into a vast hunger for practical, relevant upskilling offerings. When Kabakoo organized an open innovation event on AI and handicraft last year, the response was astounding: over 4,000 on-site participants and 19,000 virtual visitors engaged within ten days around the event. This was in Mali, a country not often in global tech headlines. It showed that given the chance, African youth are eager to dive into emerging technologies (like AI, drones, AR/VR) in ways that connect to their culture and community. Participants experienced virtual reality tours of heritage sites and an AI mentor that spoke Bambara (a West-African language), sparking ideas of how to merge high-tech with local needs.

The appetite is there, and it’s massive.

Kabakoo’s challenge now is to scale up to meet this appetite. Fortunately, its hybrid model (tech+community) is inherently scalable. The heavy lifting is done by the mobile platform and a replicable community playbook, not by expensive infrastructure. It costs a fraction of traditional flagship programs, meaning donor dollars or government funds go much further. The focus on peer-to-peer and mentor networks means each successful learner often becomes a mentor for the next, creating a multiplier effect. Already, Kabakoo has expanded learning hubs into new cities and is forging partnerships to reach more countries. And crucially, as an evidence-guided organization, we rigorously measure our impact and adapt our approach based on data – utilizing randomized methods like Recruit & Delay Control designs even as a young organization and tracking key behavioral metrics to understand what truly works. This commitment to evidence yields compelling results, demonstrating the model’s effectiveness and readiness for scale.

Independent and internal assessments conclusively demonstrates Kabakoo’s positive impact on youth across multiple dimensions. The treatment group exhibited a remarkable growth mindset increase (+23%), consistently outperforming the control group while showing greater commitment to continuous learning. The studies also show remarkable learner endorsement (a Net Promoter Score of 81, 18 months post-training). Economically, Kabakoo learners experienced steady income growth (+71% 18 months post-training) and stronger investment in professional development and productive assets, particularly in training (+51.2% 18 months post-training). Eighteen months after the program, Kabakoo-trained youth are twice as likely to invest in skill-building and digital access—and six times less likely to make no professional investment as compared to controls. Moreover, the program fostered entrepreneurial mindsets, with over 71% of treatment group participants aiming to run formal businesses within 10 years, significantly outpacing the control group’s 57%. Most compelling is that more than 88% of learners reported positive life-changing impacts from the program, with 51.2% noting improved social relations. These sustained positive outcomes, evident even 18 months post-completion, clearly establish Kabakoo’s training as a catalyst for meaningful personal and professional improvements. These aren’t small improvements; they are life-changing leaps out of poverty and into productivity. When a young person effectively doubles their earning power through a short program, it means we’re not just training people – we’re catalyzing socioeconomic empowerment (for lack of a better term!). Multiply that by thousands or millions, and you have the recipe for a grassroots economic transformation.

Furthermore, our model is built for collaboration and systemic integration. A prime example is our large-scale partnership with Mali’s national TVET system (Centre de Formation Professionnelle de Missabougou - CFPM), where we are successfully digitizing core vocational curricula for trades like market gardening, food processing, and poultry farming, proving our capacity to work effectively within government frameworks. This TVET collaboration serves as a powerful blueprint for scaling impact through national systems.

It’s hence no surprise then that global observers are taking note. The World Economic Forum selected Kabakoo as one of its “Schools of the Future” and featured it as a case study in how AI can transform learning. UNESCO and the African Union have lauded Kabakoo as one of the continent’s most innovative educational projects. Such recognition, while gratifying, mainly underscores that this model is scalable and relevant. It’s not a quirky experiment in one location; it’s a blueprint that could be adapted across the Africas and beyond.

Beyond crafting learning ecosystems for local productivity increases, Kabakoo demonstrates adaptability by exploring complementary pathways responsive to global needs. Recognizing skilled labor shortages in Europe and potential opportunities for West African youth, we are co-developing a Circular Migration pilot project. In partnership with German entities, this initiative prepares young Malians with specialized skills (starting with Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) for entry into the final stages of German vocational training and subsequent employment in Germany. This program leverages Kabakoo’s strengths in targeted, tech-enabled training and language preparation, creating regulated opportunities abroad while fostering potential long-term knowledge transfer back to home countries, embodying a truly global approach to shared prosperity.

What might the Kabakoo’s approach look like in a decade’s time? Picture a network of highdigenous innovation hubs spanning Africa, from a fishing town in Senegal to a metropolis like Lagos. Each hub is connected via the Kabakoo app, sharing curricula and mentors across borders, but each also deeply embedded in its local community, creating value while solving local problems. A young woman in Nairobi could learn solar panel installation on the same platform where a young man in Bamako learns sustainable agriculture, both engaging with content in their mother tongues and swapping insights in a pan-African discussion forum. Learning might happen in a church community center, a marketplace, or under a tree – wherever community can gather – with the co-learning space powered by a small solar energy system. This isn’t fantasy; it’s already starting to happen. Kabakoo’s ultimate vision is even building a physical Highdigenous Innovation Campus in West Africa as a “learning lighthouse” for the region. Conceived as a fully regenerative campus built with local materials, it will be a place where a village craftsman can literally walk into a fab lab and collaborate with engineers. The campus is imagined as “a house of emergence and multiple bifurcations” – in other words, a place where new paths branch out constantly, where young Africans can radically reimagine solutions outside any mind-constraining shadow. Such a flagship campus will train thousands of value creators per year on-site, but more importantly, it will radiate know-how outward through the digital platform to millions off-site. Every project and prototype developed on campus will be documented and turned into a learning module for others to use. Every success story will inspire ten more in far-flung communities.

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Toward shared prosperity

The stakes could not be higher. Africa’s youth boom will either yield an era of shared prosperity or a destabilizing crisis of joblessness. Kabakoo’s hybrid model offers a compelling roadmap towards the positive outcome – one that doesn’t wait on slow reforms or massive macro-economic structural investments, but instead unlocks the agency of young Africans here and now. It disrupts the old paradigms of learning and upskilling by refusing to separate knowing and doing, or local and global knowledge. It upends economic development orthodoxy by saying: rather than pulling people out of the informal sector, let’s inject tools, technology, and training into the diverse streams of the informal sector, where they are; as this will shift the general equilibrium toward less poverty and more shared prosperity. This is a bold vision, but a well-founded one. We have seen a young Kabakoo-trained team design medical face shields and produce tens of thousands of PPE items in the middle of a pandemic, using 3D-printers and local supply chains (see the video below).

We have seen rural artisans use augmented reality to preserve endangered crafts. We have seen teenagers with no prior tech background learn to design and sell tech-based irrigation solutions. Every one of these small breakthroughs is a building block for a much larger edifice of progress.

If scaled across Africa, such an approach could enable millions of youth to become creators of value in their communities instead of perennial job seekers. That means millions of opportunities for small-scale productivity increases, millions of dignified livelihoods where there were none, and a more inclusive, regenerative growth from the ground up. It’s a vision of shared prosperity – not the trickle-down kind which African populations have been vainly waiting for since decades, but prosperity created and shared by communities as they engage with their current challenges and value chains. And it’s a vision of agency. Young people taking charge of their destiny with smartphone in one hand and a locally made tool in the other. Crucially, it’s also aligned with climate resiliency: by leveraging indigenous knowledge (often eco-friendly by nature) and focusing on local self-reliance, this model avoids the environmental pitfalls of old industrialization paths. It fosters solutions that are not only economically viable but also culturally and ecologically sustainable.

Kabakoo’s journey is just beginning, but it carries lessons for all of us who care about the future of learning, work, and economic prosperity. The early results show what’s possible when we trust youth with real responsibility and respect the knowledge their communities already possess. It shows the power of hybridity – that magic that happens when you mix things up: mobile apps with community dialogues, coding with carpentry, High tech with indigenous insight. In the workshops of Bamako and other African cities, the future is here, and it’s highdigenous. The task now is to distribute it to every corner where a young dreamer waits. The old order is ripe for change, and a generation is voting with its feet (and fingertips on screens) for something new. It’s time to embrace this new paradigm, invest in it, and scale it up. The lives of millions and the fate of our shared prosperity depend on it.

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