The AI Literacy Fellowship for African Policymakers: A Replication Playbook

The AI Literacy Fellowship for African Policymakers: A Replication Playbook is an open, practice-based guide developed by the OpenSchool Initiative from the design, delivery, and evaluation of Cohort 1 of its AI Literacy Fellowship for African Policymakers. The four-month virtual fellowship attracted approximately 870 applications from 22 African countries, selected 70 fellows, and graduated 55 participants from 11 countries. The playbook documents the Fellowship’s complete delivery model, including its design principles, four-module programme architecture, recruitment and selection process, capstone methodology, mentorship model, cohort and community-building approach, operational structure, evaluation framework, sustainability strategy, and lessons from implementation. It also includes practical checklists, reusable resource descriptions, the complete 25-activity Cohort 1 curriculum, and the facilitated social-mixer run-sheet. Designed as a replication resource rather than a fixed script, the publication distinguishes between elements that can be retained and those that should be adapted to local contexts. It is intended for ministries, universities, think tanks, civil society organisations, training institutions, and other organisations seeking to design context-relevant AI literacy and policy-capacity programmes for policymakers and public-interest leaders. The publication is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0), enabling others to copy, adapt, and reuse the playbook with appropriate attribution.