First, let’s define what we mean by AI Builders and AI Consumers, and maybe this post will make more sense. An AI Consumer uses AI to ask questions or create something to pass off as his or her own, like an email or a report. An AI Builder works with AI to improve upon or add value to something that already exists or create value from nothing at all, like creating a Nigerian game like ludo after learning how to build a maze game or building a fit for purpose website. Got it? OK, we move.

The economic gap we see is why we designed and built the AI Builders curriculum. It’s a 4 stage 40 game curriculum that takes students from AI Explorer to AI Builder. The goal of our curriculum is to cut through the noise and hype of AI and teach the core usefulness and value of AI. As a technophile (one who absolutely loves technology), I confess I love AI. I love coding and I only gave it up when I burnt out many many years ago. AI has given me a new lease on life.

But I do not want to code for coding’s sake. I want to create and add value, and I want to teach others to do the same. So being able to teach young children, students in our school and others, is a gift for me that will keep giving. But not just children. Adults are welcome too. I used to say if I could teach my 88 year-old dad about technology, I can teach anyone. And I mean it.

The curriculum we developed is a practical one. To teach every student the core foundational knowledge of AI but with practical exercises where they learn to build artifacts, from simple games to fully functional websites. The products they build will be sellable. The skills they learn will be marketable. By the end of the curriculum, our students will be AI Builders earning with AI.

Version One

About 3 weeks ago, we launched the AI Builders curriculum we had built for adults for kids, and they loved it. We had kids who had heard of AI but never used it and did not understand it, all the way through to those who had used it and even had some criticism of it. One child asked the question, why AI, and to us it was the perfect question. Because yeah, why AI?

We launched AI Builder 1.0 with our students at the school I run at the end of last term, 91 junior secondary and 86 senior secondary, and they loved it. We have the receipts.

Mu (JSS), April 16: “I LOVE AI FORLIFE I SCORED 16 OVER 20”

Temi (JSS): “Ai is the best technology have never seen”

Ayo (JSS): “i love AI so very well it help so much and i score 19 out of 20”

Ola (JSS): “AI IS THE BEST”

The senior students engaged differently. Take Semilore and Abigael. Two SSS students who posted reflections that, on close reading, were almost certainly written with AI. The tells were obvious. Em dashes. Polished cadence. Abstract vocabulary. The unmistakable rhythm of a language model. Then they each appended their score: 19/20 and 20/20.

Semilore: “A good thinker is not defined by perfection, but by their ability to navigate uncertainty and error—both their own and that of AI. In an age where cognitive offloading to AI is increasing cognitive debt, good thinking requires intentional, active, and reflective mental effort. i scored 19/20”

Abigael: “Being a ‘good thinker’ isn’t about having a brain that is never wrong—it is about having a brain that knows how to. Since both AI and human minds are prone to hallucinations, biases, and logical shortcuts, the best thinkers rely on a set of mental habits that protect them from these pitfalls. i got 20/20.”

A traditional teacher would call this cheating. I call it Game 1 working exactly as designed. These students had absorbed the lesson well enough to immediately reach for AI when given a writing task. They prompted intuitively. They evaluated the output. They appended their personal context, their score, their stake. Then they shipped it.

They never claimed to have written the reflection themselves. They claimed the score which was theirs. The reflection was their build. AI was the engine. They were the drivers. That is literally what we teach.
Defending one’s own work, knowing when AI’s help requires disclosure, is the lesson of Game 6. They had only done Game 1. In one week, Stage 1 had already produced two Nigerian secondary students who treat AI as their first tool when faced with a writing task. That is the entire transformation we are trying to deliver.

By the beginning of the third term, 110 of 177 students had commented on version 1 of Game 1. 62% engagement. For ed-tech in Nigeria, that’s a strong number. For us, it wasn’t enough. Because here’s what V1 didn’t produce: not one student built anything with AI. They loved it. They scored well. They understood concepts. But the curriculum stopped at understanding. It did not push them to create.

Version Two

Semilore and Abigael proved Game 1 was producing the right reflex. They reached for AI to write. But reflex isn’t enough. We needed them reaching for AI to BUILD. Our Build page is the bridge. Seven starter prompts including a Nigeria Quiz, because Nigerian kids should build for their context. Three steps: get a prompt, paste it into our build sandbox (or ChatGPT or Claude), run the code in live preview. Use it. One “My own idea” button that lets students put their own concept into the template. V1 taught about AI. V2 makes you build with it.

We also fixed some issues with V1 that testing revealed. We upgraded the application and enhanced the curriculum so non-tech students would have a more seamless process. I must confess that this launch made us focus more on the children, so much so that we gamified the system. But this does not stop the adults because who doesn’t like a good game?

And then there was Tope. My assistant. She studied Business Administration and Management. She has CISCO certifications, all theoretical, because by her own admission she had never written a line of code. But between V1 closing and V2 launching, she started using Kade Labs as a regular AI Explorer. She played Game 1 a few times, then she went to Build and tried the starter prompts: Maze, Tetris, Chess, Memory Cards.

Then she clicked “Build your own.” Two weeks later she had built ten games of her own. Snake and Ladders. Ludo. A Word Mashup game. Six others. All playable. All hers. She demonstrated her tenth game to me yesterday, built in less than 15 minutes while I watched. Her workflow: open Build, click “My own idea”, copy the template prompt, paste it into ChatGPT, modify it to describe the game she wants, run it, paste the code back into Build, click Run my code, play. Our IT Officer told her she could load her games on Play Store and start earning money. She got excited.

Fourteen working artefacts. From a graduate with CISCO theory and zero programming experience. I asked her what she’d tell another Nigerian with no coding background who was considering trying this, and she said, “Kade Labs made me see that AI is not so difficult. One can learn. I would tell everyone to try it. It is necessary for this day and time.”

Tope is proof. Just game 1 of Stage 1 of our AI Builders curriculum, used the way it was designed to be used, takes someone from “I want to learn AI” to “I am building working software.” Without a CS background. Without writing code by hand. In two weeks. Now she is looking forward to Game 2. Even I said, wow. You can try it yourself at kadelabs.io/learn.

Then We Launched Again

The school came back. After running V1 with 177 students, New State High School enrolled 365 in V2: 195 in JSS, 170 in SSS. A 106% expansion of the program in the same building, with the same teachers, the same principal. Schools don’t expand programs that don’t work.

JSS classes started today at 1pm. By 3:30, 50 students from JSS 2A and JSS 2B alone had completed Game 1. That’s 78% of those two classes in their first session. V1 took six weeks to hit 62%. V2 exceeded it in an afternoon, from two classes out of the whole school.

The receipts started arriving in the class group at 2:02 PM.

Stella (2:02 PM): “I am so proud of my self i got 225”

Iradat (2:08 PM): “1950s when alan turning asked can machine talk. ai is easy and i understand”

Elizabeth (2:01 PM): “Thank you for bringing AI to new state school”

Ayomide (3:28 PM): “i score 230 i am proud of my self”

Iradat quoted the Game 1 timeline back from memory in her first class comment. Ayomide closed the afternoon with the top score so far: 230 out of a possible 255. The remaining JSS classes and all SSS classes start this week.

We will publish a follow-up later. How many of the 365 reached Game 10. How many built their own games on the side, the way Tope did. What teachers observed. What students are now making.

Bet

There is plenty of AI content in Nigeria. Most of it teaches you to consume. Write an email, summarise a PDF, ask ChatGPT for advice. Useful, but not transformative. But the economic gap of the next decade in Africa will not be between people who can use AI and people who cannot. It will be between people who build with AI and people who only consume it.

Tope built ten games in two weeks with no coding background. The kids at New State started that same path today. If even ten of them finish Stage 1 the way Tope did, that is ten more Nigerian builders than existed three months ago. If a hundred do, that is a different country starting to bloom.

If you run a school in Nigeria and want this for your students, write to us: kadelabsio@gmail.com. If you are an individual interested in learning, we urge you to join us and become an AI Builder.

Kade Labs is a Lagos-based AI literacy platform. Game 1 of Stage 1 is free at kadelabs.io/learn. Students who finish Stage 1 earn the Explorer Certificate and can continue through three more stages: Creator, Developer, Builder. Email us at kadelabsio@gmail.com to learn more.