Newsroom | Kabakoo Academies

Boilerplate

Short

Kabakoo Academies is a Bamako- and Lomé-based upskilling organization building youth economic-mobility infrastructure for Francophone West Africa. Its Highdigenous model blends AI-powered learning, community mentorship, and local knowledge, with income effects measured against control groups for 32 months.

Long

Kabakoo is a Bamako- and Lomé-based upskilling organization building youth economic mobility infrastructure for Francophone West Africa. Through its Highdigenous model, Kabakoo blends AI-powered learning, community mentorship, local knowledge, and hands-on projects to enable young people to build productive livelihoods where formal jobs are scarce. The organization currently engages 43,000+ young people and works with public and academic partners to bring locally rooted innovation into national education and workforce systems. Kabakoo's longitudinal evidence shows durable agency and income gains, continued skill-building, and positive spillovers into learners' communities. By 2030, Kabakoo aims to reach 1 million youth.

In August 2026, Mali's national upskilling program, launched under the authority of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Digital Economy, began enrolling its first cohort on Kabakoo's platform, with a shared ambition to upskill 15,000 young people by the end of 2027. Kabakoo is legally registered in Mali as La Maison de l'Etonnement.

Correct spellings

Term	Note
Kabakoo Academies	"Kabakoo" on second mention
Highdigenous	one word, capital H, never "Highindigenous"
WhatsApp Learning System	Kabakoo's platform; "WLS" on second mention
Pods	peer groups of three to five; singular "pod". The design draws on the grin, the Malian tea circle
Bamanankan	the language; "Bambara" also accepted
Kabakooins	in-product tokens
CFPM Missabougou	a major TVET center in Mali, digitized with Kabakoo; "CFPM" on second mention
Bamako.ai	the annual festival, lowercase ".ai"
The Labs	three standing labs: the Urban Agriculture Lab; the Regenerative Architecture & Design Lab; the Textile & Fashion Lab
Le Nid de Bamako	the fan pavilion; "Le Nid" on second mention
TabliCool	one word, capital T and C; the reinvented desert fridge (zeer)
Highdigenous Talks	the master-artisan story series
Dôgôkun Sôrô	"treasure of the week" in Bambara; the endogenous-architecture video series
Sènè Yiriwa	alumni-founded irrigation company (Boubou D.)
La Maison de l'Etonnement	the legal entity and the Bamako house
Michèle Traoré	Co-Founder & CEO
Yanick Kemayou	Dr.; Co-Founder & Chief Learning Officer; not "Yannick"
Djimé Sacko	Head of Technology

People

Name	Title	One line
Michèle Traoré	Co-Founder & CEO	From Timbuktu, Mali
Dr. Yanick Kemayou	Co-Founder & Chief Learning Officer	Street vendor in Yaoundé, then PhD in economics summa cum laude (Paderborn); taught at the Sorbonne
Djimé Sacko	Head of Technology	Joined Cohort 1 as a learner in 2019; Amazon Now Go Build CTO Fellow, 1 of 8 worldwide (2026)

Locations

Place	Detail
Bamako, Mali	Hub at Missabougou, Commune VI; La Maison de l'Étonnement
Ségou, Mali	Hub
Lomé, Togo	Permanent pole, Djidjolé

Images

Direct downloads, high-resolution, no email gate. Credit "Kabakoo Academies" unless the file name says otherwise. All learner faces in this kit have consent on record; please keep first name + last initial in captions.

Founder photograph: Michèle Traoré and Yanick Kemayou, together on stage | JPG, 1400px
Michèle Traoré at the Skoll World Forum, Oxford | JPG, 1400px
Highdigenous architecture build, bamboo structure, Bamako | JPG, 2000px
Community gathering, Bamako | JPG, 1400px
Learners at work, Bamako | JPG, 1400px
Djenné panorama, Mali | JPG, 2000px
Learners running the Kabakoo stand at SENUMA (VR demo), Bamako, July 2026 | JPG, 1400px
Kabakoo on the front page of L'Essor, 28 July 2026 | JPG, 800px
Master weaver Samaou Touré in her workshop | JPG, 474px
Inside Le Nid de Bamako on opening night | JPG, 1400px
The TabliCool in use | JPG, 720px
Logo, aubergine on transparent | PNG, 720px
Logo, cream on transparent (for dark surfaces) | PNG, 720px

A builder in a hard hat and Kabakoo shirt fixes handwoven fan panels onto the roof structure of Le Nid. — Building the fan roof of Le Nid de Bamako, September 2025

A crowd gathered at night under the lit, colorful fan ceiling of Le Nid de Bamako. — Inside Le Nid de Bamako on an event night, September 2025

A smiling young woman in a green headscarf and a Kabakoo shirt, in front of a bogolan cloth. — A learner at the Bamako campus, June 2026

A learner works on a laptop at a wooden table on a shaded terrace, a clay water pot beside him. — Deep work on the terrace, Bamako, July 2026

Three women, two wearing VR headsets, laugh together at the Kabakoo stand during SENUMA. — VR demos at Kabakoo's SENUMA stand, July 2026

Five team members work on laptops outside at La Maison de l'Étonnement, colorful paintings on the wall behind them. — Work session at La Maison de l'Étonnement, Bamako, 2024

Click any photo to download it at full size. All six are Kabakoo's own published photographs.

Coverage and appearances

In the press

Jun 2022RFI, "Alors on dit quoi?", live from VivaTech in Paris, with Yanick Kemayou on Sahelian youth and innovation
Jun 2022TechCabal, on African startups and the future of work at VivaTech
Dec 2021Afrikipresse, "Au Mali, des jeunesses se construisent un avenir grâce au numérique" (archived copy)
Mar 2021CNBC Africa, "Kabakoo Academies, EdTech leader and pioneer of no-code training in Africa"
Mar 2021Nairametrics, on the Zoom EdInnovation Award and the first no-code training in West Africa
Jan 2021Süddeutsche Zeitung, "Leben heißt Probleme lösen", a profile of Yanick Kemayou
Feb 2020Le Monde, "Kabakoo, l'école qui complète les cursus classiques au Mali"
Dec 2019BBC Afrique, video report from the Bamako campus

Appearances and institutional coverage

Aug 2026National upskilling program launches under the authority of Mali's Prime Minister; the Minister's enrollment spot recorded for broadcast on ORTM
27–29 Jul 2026AI for Global Development Accelerator sprint, Nairobi (Agency Fund, OpenAI, Center for Global Development)
28 Jul 2026Front page of L'Essor, Mali's state-owned national daily, ahead of SENUMA, where Kabakoo was a strategic partner for the third year
Jun 2026World Economic Forum report "Shaping the Future of Learning: Education Readiness for the Age of AI" names Kabakoo among the experts whose input informed it
10 Jun 2026World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab Sahel seminar, Washington DC. Michèle Traoré, practitioner speaker, "Promoting Youth Employment in the Sahel"
1–5 Jun 2026REAL ML 2026 flagship workshop, Johannesburg. Yanick Kemayou, Day 1 plenary on the ethics of working with communities and data collection
Apr 2026Skoll World Forum, Oxford. Michèle Traoré speaks at the Elevate Prize event "Dear Future: Building with the Next Generation"
Feb–Mar 2026Jobs for Youth in Africa Knowledge Exchange, Nairobi, convened by the Government of Kenya and the World Bank with some 40 African countries
Oct 2025Presentation at World Bank headquarters, Washington DC, on model replication across public systems
Sep 2025Featured in the World Bank's "Africa LEADS" article
2025Make Good Famous Summit, Miami (Elevate Prize winner)
Jul 2024ORTM "Actu Hebdo," 45-minute live appearance on Mali's first national channel
2024World Economic Forum, "Shaping the Future of Learning: AI in Education 4.0," one of 9 global case studies
2023–2024Innovation Lab covered in 8+ Sahel-region outlets, including L'Evénement Niger, allAfrica, and Journal du Cameroun
2020World Economic Forum "Schools of the Future," one of 16 worldwide

For monthly first-party updates since July 2023, see the Kabakoo update on Substack, written by Michèle Traoré and Yanick Kemayou.