Yes, yes! Another Kabakoo monthly newsletter. Get ready for some insights, updates, and exciting upcoming stuff.
As always, some music first: One of our main jams over the last few days has been Dunia by Zoumana Tereta, aka “Zou”. His music reveals the depth of someone who spent most of his life working as a truck driver across West Africa before finding modest financial success as a musician. His sokou (a monocord instrument) playing and his voice transport you directly to the Macina area in the Sahel. Promise. Just give it a try.
What are we building?
Kabakoo designs and scales evidence-based pathways for West African youth, integrating AI, community, and cultural insights to foster the mindset and skills essential for building productive livelihoods and driving systemic change in informally dominated economies.
☀️ July 2025 Highlights
We are proud to announce the formation of our official Board, a group of exceptional personalities who will help guide our Highdigenous journey with strategic clarity, ethical & scientific depth, and a global perspective.
The Kabakoo Board brings together internationally recognized scientists, creatives, strategists, and leaders in finance and philanthropy: Dr. Abeba Birhane, AI ethics and governance scientist; Lea Buck, strategic philanthropy and impact investing leader; Cheick Diallo, world-acclaimed designer and architect; Bankaly Kaba, capital-market expert with a passion for new technologies; Temina Madon, PhD, science-to-policy entrepreneur and investor; and Michèle Traoré, Kabakoo’s CEO.
Their commitment is a powerful signal of trust in Kabakoo’s vision and our team's abilities to execute toward it. Meet the Board members and learn more about their amazing work here.
Kabakoo Learning Dashboard: Real-time insights for stronger operational muscles
With our latest cohort, we’re adding a new layer to our operational toolkit: the Kabakoo Learning Dashboard, our unified interface for monitoring the entire learning ecosystem in real time.
From a single screen, the dashboard brings together key engagement and short-term outcome metrics: total and active enrollments, WhatsApp message volume, AI Mentor responses, in-person workshop attendance, the flow of module videos sent and validated, etc.
Organized into functional sections like Video Lesson Analytics, Attendees, Learners Overview, and Live Events, it transforms what used to be scattered observations into a precise and actionable map.
We can now spot the most active learners, detect early drops in participation before they escalate, or track the immediate effect of a messaging campaign.
This is a milestone in Kabakoo’s commitment to evidence-driven learning. We’re looking ahead to a future where facilitators/partners in every learning hub powered by Kabakoo products can act on real-time insights to better serve their communities.
While designed for Kabakoo, we hope this dashboard and its future iterations will inspire fresh approaches to learning analytics in other collaborating organizations.
Can a personalized follow-up boost learner engagement?
Between June 27 and July 16, 2025, we ran another A/B test with the OSC Numérique cohort to measure the impact of personalized follow-up on learner engagement within our WhatsApp Learning System. This time, we looked at a simple question: if the AI System actively follows up after each exchange, will learners stay more engaged? A total of 127 learners were randomly split into two groups. The distribution of previous workshop participation is balanced across the two groups. Group A received a personalized follow-up message from the AI System after every interaction, always ending with an engaging question to encourage further discussion, unless the learner clearly closed the exchange (by sending, for instance, “See you later” or “Goodbye”). Group B did not receive the extra encouragement for further engagement. The only difference between the two groups was this follow-up rule embedded in the AI System’s prompt.
Personalized follow-up seems to matter. On average, learners in Group A (with personalized follow-up) sent 11.9 messages per learner, compared to 9.1 in Group B, a difference of +2.9 messages, or +32%. However, this difference was not statistically significant in learner-level tests (Welch’s t=1.17, p=0.245). An aggregated Poisson rate test suggested higher overall activity in Group A (z=3.67, p=0.0002), but this approach inflates sample size by treating messages as independent.
Data does not fully support the hypothesis that a small change in AI prompt design created a measurable lift in interaction rates. While personalized follow-up appears to encourage greater engagement, the effect is more modest than expected and does not reach strong statistical significance. Given that the test was run over only ~20 days, it is possible that the short timeframe limited our ability to detect stronger or more sustained differences. We will keep deepening our understanding of engagement in WhatsApp-based learning, to learn how timely prompts can subtly shape how learners engage with the system.
Wrapping up our second Regenerative Architecture and Extended reality cohort
Last month marks the successful completion of our second Regenerative Architecture and Extended Reality (XR) cohort! This edition evolved significantly from our inaugural program two years ago.
The Regenerative Architecture and Extended Reality (XR) cohort represents the second edition of our Innovation Lab program, designed to equip Sahelian youth with skills at the intersection of endogenous architectural knowledge and frontier technologies. The overall goals are 1) to enable the learners to develop regenerative solutions for the Sahel’s unique ecological, social, and cultural context and challenges. And 2) for Kabakoo as an organization to learn how to deploy such programs via large-scale partnerships.
Building on lessons from the first cohort, we introduced a more robust, multidisciplinary framework featuring a strengthened XR track and comprehensive focus on urban regenerative agriculture. We also revamped our enrollment strategy with three thematic entry tracks: Sustainable Architecture and Local Materials, Urban Organic Agriculture, and Extended Reality. This deliberate test to gauge different framings yielded an overwhelming response, particularly for urban agriculture.
From 50 initial learners, a core group of 20 highly engaged individuals fully embraced the multidisciplinary curriculum. With a diverse mix of students, graduates, artisans, and tech enthusiasts, the program articulated around 8 modules, created fertile ground for interdisciplinary exchange and collaborative projects. This cohort surpassed previous results, with learners completing 201 challenges and 457 self-initiated tasks in their learning portfolios. Beyond numbers, learner testimonials captured deeper impacts, from self-discovery through extended reality to new entrepreneurial ambitions rooted in local materials.
Learners from Kabakoo's latest Regenerative Architecture & XR cohort.
We’re already integrating insights from this cohort into our next edition. Early priorities include deepening XR integration to catalyze Kabakoo’experience as one of the world’s leading programs where learners can design, code, and deploy socially-embedded XR projects end-to-end. Additionally, we are expanding our hands-on urban agriculture and practical architecture labs at our Dogodouman experimentation site at the outskirts of Bamako.
Bamako.ai Season 3 : Radical Care is calling
From August 29–31, Bamako.ai returns for Season 3 ! Preparations are heavily underway for the next chapter of our cutting-edge event celebrating Highdigenous innovation in the Sahel and beyond. Three days of bold ideas and collaborative experiments at the crossroads of radical care, collective futures, and Highdigenous intelligences.
Why radical care? Well, this has been a really though year for us. We are used to some degree of hard hustle. But the last months have been brutal. For the whole organization. For us as founders. As someone once told us: “So you are telling me you have no connections in philanthropy, and neither of you can count on a rich family background? Good luck in fundraising for that dreamy vision.” This was in March 2019 after we have presented Kabakoo and the Highdigenous idea during an event in Paris, France. This was actually well-meaning advice to save us from being delulu. It did not help. Stubborn us. We are still delulu. The dream is still alive. Thanks to the many good souls who are taking good care of us. Even when we ourselves are full of doubts and out of fuel, your care keeps us afloat.
This Bamako.ai edition will explore how endogenous knowledge systems and frontier tech such as agentic AI and XR can merge to turn scarcity into regenerative power. Through immersive talks, sensory experiences, and hands-on creations, we will collectively rethink how we care for ourselves, our communities, and our planet. To the best of our knowledge, Bamako.ai, #3 is among the very first practical and collective explorations of the intersection of AI and Radical Care. From Bamako to the World!
Expect augmented reality hairstyles, low-tech climate solutions, AI-powered personalized sonic well-being experiences, and a highdigenous food court serving superfoods and experimental tastes from the Sahel that nourish body, mind, and imagination.
Kabakoo Faces
(With over 35,125 registered learners, each month we spotlight a member of our vibrant community.)
Meet Mamady S., a territorial planning student at the University of Ségou. He is a learner at the co-learning space that we operate via a partnership with the Mieruba Art Center, a local organization with deep roots in the city of Ségou.
At Kabakoo, Mamady discovered how to augment his university training with digital tools, giving him a significant advantage to build a career. He now leverages technology to illustrate his visions for Ségou and mobilize his community around urban planning and public health. “Thanks to Kabakoo, I can now show the beauty I imagine for our environment and share it with everyone.” In this video, Mamady demonstrates his use of maps, AI visualizations, and digital storytelling to communicate his vision.
Watch for yourself and see the Highdigenous approach in action, live from Ségou, central Mali
Thank you for reading to the end! 💜🧡
Michèle & Yanick
