Our story

Built for
Africa.

The Yard is Africa's first 24-hour AI Foundry. Built on Mombasa Road, Nairobi. 100 desks, GPU compute, and Claude access via M-Pesa — removing every barrier that has kept African builders from the global AI conversation.

We started from a simple observation: the tools that are reshaping the world require a USD credit card to access. Most Kenyan developers don't have one. So the world's most powerful AI models — Claude, Gemini, GPT — were effectively unavailable to the continent that has the most to gain from them.

The Yard fixes that. M-Pesa is the gateway. Top up your token wallet with KSh 100 and get the same Claude access as a developer in San Francisco. The building is open 24 hours — because insight doesn't keep business hours.

100
Desks · 5 zones
24
Hours · every day
25
Fellows · Cohort 1
5%
Acceptance rate

The Fellowship

The Yard Fellowship is Claude Corps Africa — modelled directly on Anthropic's flagship AI fellowship programme in America, built for the African context. 25 fellows, 12 months, fully funded. Three months of intensive CCA-F certification training at The Yard, followed by nine months embedded at a mission-driven host organisation.

Fellows are selected Africa-wide. No degree required. No experience limit. Career changers, self-taught builders, and fresh graduates are all welcome. The only requirements: you already use AI, you can learn fast, and you care about what AI can do for Africa.

What we believe

Talent is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not.
The next generation of AI architects is already in Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa, and Kampala. They just need the infrastructure, the credentials, and the community.
Access before acceleration.
Before we talk about AI transforming Africa, African builders need to be able to access AI tools without a USD credit card. M-Pesa solves this. The Yard builds on top of that solution.
Build in the open.
Our fellowship curriculum will be open-sourced after Cohort 1. Our M-Pesa gateway will be open-sourced. Any African operator who wants to run a Claude-powered programme can use our infrastructure.

Where we are

The Yard is currently in pre-launch. The building is being fitted out on Mombasa Road, Nairobi. The fellowship waitlist is open. The AI challenge is live. The first cohort begins when the building opens.

We are building The Yard to be Africa's answer to Claude Corps — and we are in active discussions with Anthropic about a formal partnership. If you are an NGO, startup, or government agency that wants to host a fellow — apply here.

Join The Yard

Join the waitlist for the workspace or the fellowship. Applications are open Africa-wide. Free for Cohort 1.

Fellowship waitlist → Yard waitlist →