Transformative AI Essentials Fellowship
An intensive 8-week structured curriculum for students, researchers, and engineers across Sub-Saharan Africa to build a grounded understanding of Transformative AI, governance, and high-impact career pathways.
DURATION & FORMAT
8 Weeks • Virtual & Interactive
Weekly curated reading assignments, guided discussions with experienced safety facilitators, and collaborative problem-solving.
GLOBAL NETWORK
Direct Mentorship & Links
Connect with leading international AI safety researchers, governance fellows, and peer builders from over 10 African countries.
OUTPUT & CAREERS
Capstone Projects & Grants
Graduates receive guidance to apply for international fellowships, grant funding, research internships, and chapter leadership roles.
SYLLABUS
Comprehensive 8-Week Curriculum Breakdown
Pre-requisites
AI Safety Foundations
- •Tell us all you know about AI Safety
- •How to read AI Safety Papers
- •Career paths you are considering
- •Community onboarding & introductions
Week 1
Existential Risks & Catastrophic Vectors
- •Why should we care about global catastrophe prevention?
- •Historical impact of technological shocks in Africa
- •Case studies on risks from unaligned frontier AI systems
- •Frameworks for long-term safety governance
Week 2
Frontier AI Models and Africa
- •What counts as frontier AI and compute scaling?
- •Capabilities vs. Alignment trade-offs
- •How model evaluation benchmarks work
- •Accounting for African dataset representation gaps
Week 3
Defining Safe & Beneficial AI
- •Core differences between AI ethics and technical AI safety
- •Socio-technical feedback loops in developing markets
- •Interpretability, robustness, and mechanistic oversight
- •Hands-on red-teaming exercises
Week 4
Subfields & Alignment Architectures
- •The outer vs. inner alignment problem
- •Local language evaluation and cultural benchmarking
- •Where African technical talent has maximum leverage
- •Intersections between technical alignment and policy
Week 5
Africa's AI Safety Landscape & Policy
- •Why the Global South must shape frontier AI safety
- •Evaluating regional strategies (AU AI Strategy, Smart Africa)
- •Building independent safety evaluation institutions
- •Becoming an active contributor to global labs and research
Week 6
Capstone, Fellowships & Career Launch
- •Structuring international research grant proposals
- •Global fellowship pipelines (MATS, ERA, BlueDot, GovAI)
- •Capstone presentations & cohort graduation
JOIN THE FELLOWSHIP
Ready to Deepen Your AI Safety Expertise?
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Full tuition is subsidized for admitted fellows from Sub-Saharan Africa.