By Adonis Byemelwa
DeAfrica expands access to high-quality online education, connecting thousands of learners across Africa to practical AI skills and global knowledge. Photo courtesy
Distance Education for Africa has learned, over years of quiet experimentation and steady growth, that access is only the first hurdle.
What truly changes lives is relevance: education that speaks to people where they are, equips them for where they are going, and treats them as active participants in a rapidly changing world.
In December 2025, that philosophy was on full display as DeAfrica concluded its seven-week course, “ChatGPT: Your New Thinking Partner,” marking a significant moment not only for the organisation but for hundreds of learners navigating Africa’s digital future.
The course, which ran from late September through late November, set out with an ambitious but grounded aim: to make artificial intelligence practical, approachable, and helpful in everyday work and learning.
Certificates are now being issued to students who completed the program, a process that has sparked an outpouring of reflection from participants who see the credential as more than a line on a résumé. For many, it represents a first meaningful engagement with AI tools that are reshaping communication, productivity, and decision-making worldwide.
What stands out most about the program is its reach. More than 1,300 participants enrolled from 43 African countries, spanning large economies and small island states alike.
From Mauritius and Botswana to Kenya and Uganda, from Ethiopia and Mali to Senegal and Nigeria, learners logged in with different professional backgrounds, levels of connectivity, and expectations.
Some joined from universities and offices, others from homes where bandwidth was precious and time carefully rationed. That diversity was not incidental; it shaped discussions, examples, and shared problem-solving throughout the course.
Nevertheless, scale alone does not explain the course’s impact. Participants repeatedly emphasised how the content met them at eye level. Rather than presenting artificial intelligence as a distant or intimidating force, the course treated it as a thinking partner, something to question, test, and adapt responsibly.
Assignments focused on writing more clearly, organising ideas, and exploring creative and professional uses of AI tools, all while encouraging critical reflection about limitations and ethics. In a context where technology training often feels abstract or imported, this practical orientation mattered.
Feedback arriving at DeAfrica’s offices has reflected that sense of relevance. A participant from Kenya, writing after receiving his certificate, described the program as exceptionally well structured and immediately applicable to his professional goals.
He spoke not only about new skills, but about confidence, the confidence to experiment, to ask better questions, and to imagine new possibilities. Similar messages have come from across the continent, suggesting that the course filled a gap many learners had long felt but struggled to name.
That success did not come without challenges. Coordinating a continent-wide online course inevitably meant navigating uneven internet access, differing levels of digital literacy, and the realities of learners balancing study with work and family responsibilities.
DeAfrica addressed these constraints through flexible scheduling, clear instructional design, and a teaching approach that emphasised clarity over jargon. The result was not perfection, but progress: a learning environment where persistence was rewarded and curiosity encouraged.
The course was led by Ed Breaux of the Democrify Foundation, whose experience in inclusive digital education helped anchor the program in real-world concerns.
His instruction emphasised not only how AI works, but how it fits into human judgment, creativity, and responsibility. That perspective resonated strongly with learners who are acutely aware that technology, left unguided, can widen inequalities as easily as it can reduce them.
Rather than treating the December conclusion as an endpoint, DeAfrica is using it as a launchpad. On February 18, 2026, the organisation will introduce a new program, “Your Journey in the AI Economy, Skills for Work, Learning, and Life.”
The forthcoming course builds on lessons from the ChatGPT experience and aims to go further, focusing on how individuals can adapt, reskill, and remain relevant in an economy increasingly shaped by intelligent systems.
This AI initiative sits alongside a broader slate of DeAfrica offerings in entrepreneurship, innovation, language learning, information technology, and cybersecurity.
Together, they reflect a long-term view: that Africa’s future competitiveness depends not on isolated trainings, but on ecosystems of learning that blend technical skill, critical thinking, and entrepreneurial insight.
Under the leadership of Sidiki Traore, DeAfrica’s president and founder, and a recognised figure in online learning across the continent, the organisation has steadily built credibility by listening as much as teaching.
The ChatGPT course, in that sense, is not an outlier but a continuation of a lived practice, testing ideas, learning from participants, and refining approaches based on real outcomes rather than slogans.
As certificates make their way into inboxes across Africa, they carry a quiet message. They signal that advanced digital learning is no longer confined by geography, and that African learners are not waiting passively for the future to arrive.
They are preparing for it, shaping it, and, in growing numbers, helping to define what an inclusive AI-driven world might look like.
Originally published by Pan African Visions (https://panafricanvisions.com/2026/01/deafrica-sparks-a-new-generation-of-ai-thinkers-across-africa/)