Overview

Africa’s Talking, in collaboration with Google, presents LaunchPad: Generative AI + APIs for Innovation - a groundbreaking developer program designed to upskill and inspire developers across Sub-Saharan Africa.

This immersive learning journey blends Google Cloud’s Generative AI expertise with the power of Africa’s Talking APIs, guiding participants through 10 comprehensive modules, assignments, and a capstone project. The program moves from foundational cloud and AI concepts into advanced frameworks, API integrations, and offline-ready solutions—helping developers build impactful, production-ready applications for real-world challenges.

By the end, participants will have worked on hands-on assignments, collaborated with peers, and built a portfolio-ready project that showcases their ability to combine Generative AI with APIs for innovation across industries. Find all modules and resources attached below.

Get ready for a program full of up-skilling and knowledge! 

Pre - requisite:

• Basic programming skills (Python, NodeJs and Java)

• Basic understanding of what an AI Agent is (Difference between LLM and AI Agents)

• Learner must be familiar with cloud computing concepts

• Create a developer profile to be able to claim badge

• Set up Google Cloud Console

• Create your Africa's Talking Developer Account to use AT Products

• Join the Slack channel: #at-google-ai-ml

• NB: Google cloud credits will be provided at the workshops

TO GET STARTED WITH THE PROGRAM, PLEASE REGISTER AT THE LINK HERE. 

Module 2

• Useful links
  

  Build AI-powered web apps with Firebase Extensions for the Gemini API

Module Details: Build AI-powered web apps with Firebase Extensions for the Gemini API

What it is: 

This module is a hands-on, beginner-friendly guide designed to help developers ship an AI feature rapidly using Firebase Extensions that connect to Google’s Gemini API. Instead of writing custom backend code, you’ll use a no-code/low-code extension that seamlessly handles communication between your web app and Gemini’s powerful multimodal models. The extension serves as a managed proxy—routing text, image, and function-calling requests to Gemini and returning structured responses to your client. You’ll learn how to integrate this setup into your Firebase project, link it with Authentication and Firestore, and bring AI-driven interactions like chat, summarization, and image captioning to life with minimal overhead.

Why it matters: 

Building AI-powered features often involves re-creating the same foundational backend components—authentication, API endpoints, logging, and usage monitoring. Firebase Extensions for Gemini remove that repetitive work, letting you focus on user experience instead of infrastructure. With just a few configuration steps, you get production-ready integrations: secure endpoints that automatically check user permissions, logs for observability, and optional Firestore persistence for analytics. This approach is ideal for teams or solo developers who want to quickly add features such as AI chat assistants, text summarizers, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) workflows, or image-understanding tools into their Firebase apps. By leveraging managed extensions, you stay within the Firebase ecosystem—gaining scalability, security, and developer efficiency without leaving your familiar stack.

What you’ll build:

A lightweight web chat (or “Ask AI” sidebar) that sends prompts to Gemini via an installed Extension; responses stream back to the browser and optionally get stored in Firestore for history/analytics.

Takeaways:

• When to use Extensions vs. custom Cloud Functions

• How to gate AI usage behind Auth & quotas

• A pattern you can reuse for other AI features (summarize, classify, extract, image caption, etc.)

Why Attend

• Over $5000 to be won: 3 winners every key city and 1 overall winner from any city

• Hands-On Innovation: Learn by building real-world AI and API-powered projects.

• Portfolio-Ready Work: Complete assignments and a capstone project to showcase your skills.

• Expert Guidance: Access Google Cloud trainers and Africa’s Talking engineers.

• Pan-African Collaboration: Connect with fellow developers from across Sub-Saharan Africa.

• Career Growth: Gain exposure to tools, frameworks, and communities that open new opportunities.

Target Attendees

• Developers across Sub-Saharan Africa passionate about AI and APIs

• Software engineers, backend/frontend developers, and data scientists

• University students and graduates in STEM fields

• Startup founders and entrepreneurs building tech solutions

• Professionals seeking to expand into Generative AI and API-driven innovation

Looking Ahead: Program Timeline

• Kickoff –
  Introduction to program
  Module 1: Google Cloud & Generative AI Fundamentals
  Module 2: Foundations of APIs & Africa’s Talking Core Services

• Week 1 – Virtual Learning
  Module 3: Gemini for End-to-End SDLC + Build an App with Gemini API
  Module 4: Generative AI SDKs & API Integrations (start)

• Week 2 – Virtual Learning
  Module 4: API integrations (continuation)
  Module 5: Advanced Africa’s Talking APIs (start)

• Week 3 – Virtual Learning
  Module 5: Advanced Africa’s Talking APIs (continuation)
  Module 6: Building Generative AI Applications with Specific Frameworks + Assignment

Assignment: Creative Generative AI Applications

• Week 4 – Virtual Learning
  Module 7 (Part 1): Leveraging Google Cloud ML and AI APIs

• Week 5 – Virtual Learning
  Module 7 (Part 2): Leveraging Google Cloud ML and AI APIs (Continuation)

• Week 6 – Virtual + Physical Meetup
  Module 8: Developing & Deploying Agentic Systems (Lab 1, Lab 2, Lab 3, Lab 4, Lab 5) + Assignment
  Mid-program recap + assignment review
  Module 9 Intro: Africa’s Talking Integrated Applications

• Week 7 – Virtual Learning
  Module 9: Africa's Talking Integrated Applications (start)

• Week 8 – Virtual Learning
  Module 9: Africa's Talking Integrated Applications (continuation)

• Week 9 – Virtual Learning
  Module 10: Local and Offline AI Solutions (start)

• Week 10 – Virtual Learning
  Module 10: Local and Offline AI Solutions with labs (continuation)

New to Africa's Talking? Get started here.

Publish on Africa's Talking Marketplace

• Marketplace : Get Call Back as a Service and Publish your plugin/app for our customer.

• Developer Documentation (We welcome feedback)

Gigs:

We would love to reach out to you so that you can build for our customers, please fill out this form with details to ensure we have your details:

GIG/HACK DEVELOPER PORTFOLIO FORM

Join community channels:

Slack:

• Join Africa's Talking slack community here

Please follow our Twitter handle too:

• @AfricasTalking

You can get our videos, recaps, and event interviews on our YouTube channel, subscribe to get updates:

• Africa's Talking YouTube Channel

Africa's Talking community allows developers to learn skills for the modern-day African Developer. We are language and framework agnostic. All developers are welcome. This is where Africa's Talking developers community meets to build, learn and exchange knowledge.

We are helping software developers and businesses to bring their ideas to life through easy-to-use APIs easily.

Would you like to partner with us? Kindly contact the Developer Experience Team.