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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhen Jamie, Grace and Gilbert walked into the \/\/kood offices in Tallinn back in February, they didn\u2019t know much about us and they definitely didn\u2019t know what they had signed up for. All three had started their journey in Nairobi where access to real-world engineering experience during studies is still the exception, not the norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They had earned their spot at a Digital Explorers hackathon the previous November, a 48 hour hackathon where they were given a problem to solve: how to enhance trust and quality of peer-reviews?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They built a prototype on the spot. They placed in the top five. And a few months later, they were in Estonia, sitting in our office, being asked to turn that idea into something real. What followed were two parallel tracks of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The visible one was the product: a prototype of an AI enhanced peer-review system for \/\/kood students, where AI steps in to measure review quality step in at the right place to offer guidance & support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The less visible one, the one Jamie, Grace and Gilbert keep coming back to, is what changed how they see themselves as engineers. \u201cFrom day one, they worked like full members of the team, not interns. They asked the right questions, challenged assumptions and built something we\u2019re genuinely excited to put in front of our students,\u201d Kaur J\u00e4rvp\u00f5ld, \/\/kood CPO and mentor to Digital Explorers commented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learning to slow down<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
In Kenya, Grace told us, software development often looks like this: \u201cBusiness asks for a product, and they want it in a month or two. They don\u2019t want you to waste time collecting data. They want you to jump to the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At \/\/kood, Kaur asked them to do the opposite. For a full month, the three interns ran user interviews, sat in on student reviews, spoke with engineers and built nothing. \u201cI was complaining. I told my lecturer back home that we were wasting time. But now, looking back, we haven\u2019t had to go back and fix something we built wrong. That culture was completely new to me,\u201d said Grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That shift from \u201cship and learn\u201d to \u201clearn, then ship\u201d was, for all three of them, the most professionally formative moment of the internship. Not a technical skill but a way of thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learning to be trusted<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The second shift was about how work itself is organised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gilbert came to Tallinn from a tech culture where seniority is visible – corner offices, hierarchy, presence often measured in hours at a desk. At \/\/kood, he found something very different. \u201cYou can literally share a desk with your CEO. You feel like you\u2019re all working towards the same thing. There\u2019s no micromanagement but that also means the responsibility is yours,\u201d Gilbert said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Jamie, the shift came through the work itself. After years of computer science theory at Strathmore and an internship that didn\u2019t quite click, she finally got to build something end-to-end: backend, frontend, interaction design, storytelling. \u201cIt was just perfect. To apply what I was learning in school. There\u2019s been so much learning,\u201d said Jamie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learning what the work is for<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
There is a particular kind of confidence you don\u2019t get from a classroom, the confidence of building something real, for real users. Jamie, Grace and Gilbert leave with that. A working prototype that will soon be used by hundreds of learners, not as an exercise, but as part of a real product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But they also leave with something else: a clearer view of the gap between how they were trained and how they could work. \u201cIn public universities in Kenya, most of what we\u2019re taught is not applicable in the job market. It\u2019s a lot of theory. The degree didn\u2019t fully meet my expectations. But I kept building on my own, hackathons, side projects, and communities. That\u2019s where the real growth happened,\u201d Gilbert commented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That self-built layer – the hackathons, the side projects, the peer learning is exactly what \/\/kood is designed to make part of the system itself. So the next generation doesn\u2019t have to build it alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What happens next<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
kood\/Nairobi piloted last year in Kenya, this year we\u2019ll open our doors in partnership with Kenyatta University and supported by ESTDEV. Twelve students are already studying in Nairobi. Applications for the next cohort are opening soon. Check out koodkenya.tech<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gilbert summed it up best: \u201cKenyans are the most ambitious people out there. We have massive talent. If you show people what an opportunity actually looks like, what others have built, where it leads, they will go all the way. If \/\/kood had found us in school, we\u2019d have been first in line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Digital Explorers is a talent partnership programme co-funded by the European Union and run with partners across Estonia and Kenya. kood\/Nairobi is launched in partnership with Kenyatta University. Both projects are supported by EstDev.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 20 July \u2013 07 August 2026 \u00b7 Kenyatta University<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nNext Sprint in Nairobi<\/h3>\n\n\n\n