Welcome to our first newsletter of the year! May 2025 bring more light and brigther laughter. Here’s to a year filled with love, fulfillment, and joy. And for the inevitable challenges, may we all find the support we need to turn them into moments of growth and strength.

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🎶 Our song of the month is New York, New York, by Frank Sinatra. In fact, we did not listen to this song in the last weeks. It just came to our mind, and we put it on rotation while we were working on this newsletter. Read on till the end and you will surely get why…

What are we building?

Kabakoo is a community-driven upskilling platform designed to allow young people in West Africa to develop the mindset and the skills needed to improve their life in a context of scarce formal jobs.

☀️ December 2024 Highlights

The learners in the current cohorts have already documented nearly 400 tasks in their digital portfolios using the Kabakoo app. It’s all about finding meaning in what’s happening around them, embracing a sense of responsibility, and exploring their curiosity.

For context, since the Kabakoo Learning Experience is project-based, the Kabakoo app gives learners a tool to document their work on different projects. In the app, they can create new “challenges,” which provide a structured framework for documenting their progress by answering questions such as: Why am I working on this? With whom? How is it going (situation reports)? What are the results? and What are my reflections on the task?

This setup isn’t just a fun way for learners to capture and reflect on their work; it also gives them a handy method to showcase their progress whenever needed.

We conducted a content analysis of tasks documented by our current learners at Kabakoo in Mali to better understand their work and progress. The results show that our focus on mindset shifts is proving effective. Our two core mindset-oriented modules, “Apprendre à Apprendre” (Learning to Learn) and “Visualiser pour Réussir” (Visualize to Succeed), form the foundation for most learner documentation, which largely centers around mindset-related topics.

A sense of responsibility and control

Our learners’ documentation shows that when ask to reflect about situations in which they had to take up responsibility, our learners do find situations where they demonstrated or developed a strong sense of responsibility and control over their lives. For instance, Ousmane D. shares how he stepped up to support his family when his father retired, a decision that initially seemed daunting but ultimately led to personal growth. Similarly, Mamadou T. recounts how he assumed leadership responsibilities in his class when faced with an ineffective class representative. He further reflects that his experience led to improved leadership skills, better organizational abilities, and increased self-confidence. The documentation reveals how everyday experiences of assuming responsibility can serve as powerful catalysts for personal development, transforming what might initially appear as obligations into opportunities for growth and self-discovery.

This reflects an assets-based approach to livelihoods, showing the value of getting young people discover their strengths and potential using resources and skills they already have. This approach helps them recognize and build upon their inherent capabilities rather than focusing on deficits.

Belonging to a community

Our analysis of learners’ portfolio further reveals a strong emphasis on human connections and collaboration within the Kabakoo community. Learners consistently highlight how interactions with peers enrich their learning experience through knowledge sharing and mutual support. A striking example is the collaboration during the Semaine Internationale de l'Artisanat Touareg (SIAT), where several groups of Kabakoo learners worked together to showcase technological innovations while celebrating their cultural heritage. The portfolio texts from learners like Zeni K. and Alassane M. emphasize how these collaborative experiences not only enhanced their professional skills but also deepened their cultural understanding and sense of community belonging. We hence learned that we should continue nurturing a supportive environment where learners feel comfortable sharing ideas, engaging in meaningful discussions about their projects, and supporting each other’s growth, whether they’re from the same cohort or different learning tracks.

Curiosity as a driving force for finding meanings

The documentation in our learners’ portfolios reveals how the Kabakoo Learning Experience is capable of igniting a multifaceted curiosity in their learning journey. For instance, Oumou D.’s detailed questioning of marriage customs shows how learners are developing critical thinking skills by examining social norms. This intellectual curiosity extends to practical skills as well, as seen in Mariam C.’s story of pursuing both IT management and regenerative architecture modules, or Adama C.’s project about an app for restaurant management. The learners’ curiosity manifests not just in their choice of subjects, but in their approach to learning itself. Encouraged by the content of our core modules and structure of the portfolio, they consistently seek to understand the ‘why’ behind their chosen paths. For instance, Mariam T.’s reflection on how joining our Regenerative Architecture track has helped her refine her aspirations of working in the construction sector. We are happy to see this, as we believe that this curiosity-driven approach leads to more meaningful learning experiences and helps learners develop a deeper understanding of their surroundings.

Local knowledge, of course!

Speaking of meaningful learning experiences, our learners’ portfolios reveal a strong commitment to culturally-rooted innovation. This should not come as a surprise, giving Kabakoo’s Highdigenous approach of leveraging both emerging tech such as AI and AR and endogenous knowledges in our work. For instance, Sekou D.’s detailed proposal for a regenerative architecture museum showcases this perfectly. In his portfolio, he describes his dream of a clay and bamboo building incorporating local building materials to reduce the inside temperature. This demonstrates how our learners connect local forms of knowledge with contemporary needs. They are not just learning technical skills, but are actively thinking about ways to create value based on their cultural heritage.

On our way to digitizing technical and vocational training

December was a crucial month for our collaboration with the Centre de Formation Professionnelle de Missabougou (CFPM), a leading center for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Mali: We have started the production of the multimedia content with teachers from the center. Over the course of three weeks, our team was able to produce more than 200 (!) educational videos covering market gardening, poultry farming, and agri-food processing. This content production phase came after months of intensive collaborative work between our UX designers, instructional designers, the team at the CFPM, and LuxDev.

Intense work, but also a lot of fun. See for yourself in the vlog below 👇🏿 (LinkedIn post here for those on TikTok ban).

We are exhilarated about the successful content production phase. It's quite a feat! Indeed, at the beginning, most teachers expressed concern that the digitization project might replace them. Congratulations to our team for successfully bringing the staff of the TVET center on board, and our gratitude goes to the supporting staff and teachers of the CFPM and LuxDev for their trust. #OnFaitEnsemble!

Navigating language gaps

Another piece of news from the TVET digitization project: Building solutions for thriving youth livelihoods here in Mali is some sort of extreme test. Following a (slightly heated) discussion we had with one of the project stakeholders, we ran a survey among 40 learners (roughly 10% of the center’s total learner body) to learn about their preferred language of instruction. And the result is that while nearly everyone preferred oral explanation in classes in a Malian language such as Bambara, 92% of them have difficulty reading the language, and 50% can’t read it at all, stating that they prefer to read in French. So while the preferred language for interactive learning sessions seems to be Bambara, French is preferred when it comes to reading.

Of course, this makes designing effective learning experiences in countries with strong languages such as Mali all the more challenging. Sure, we were well aware of this when we started Kabakoo, and this is actually one of the main reasons we decided to launch Kabakoo in Mali. It was one of those classic “science-mode-vs.-business-mode” debates we usually have at Kabakoo. From a business standpoint, we should have chosen a country easier to penetrate, while from a science perspective, we saw starting in Mali as a form of extreme testing. We went for extreme testing. And we still believe that a solution gaining wide adoption here would be easier to transfer to countries where French (or English, or any other major international language) is the lingua franca than transferring solutions built in those contexts to countries such as Mali or Burkina Faso, where local languages dominate the social interactions.

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. It’s up to you, Sahel, Sahel!

Kabakoo Faces

(With over 34 821 registered learners, each month we spotlight a member of our vibrant community.)

Despite facing challenges in traditional education, including four unsuccessful attempts at his high school diploma, Bob kept his creative spirit alive by designing logos as a side hustle. However, discouraged by the lack of support for his artistic passion, he had almost given up on his dream of drawing.

His journey took an exciting turn when a Kabakoo post on social media caught his eye. At Kabakoo, Bob found his tribe! He didn’t just gain skills, as he shares with enthusiasm: “What I love most is transforming my ideas into visuals. Kabakoo gave me the tools and confidence to do it.” Catch his full story here!

Bob’s story reminds us that, even in challenging environments, creativity and determination can flourish and lead to value creation when nurtured by the right environment and support – a principle that lies at the heart of our mission at Kabakoo.

Thank you for reading to the end ! 💜🧡

Michèle & Yanick

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