Skills in Every Hand: Freetown’s Young Drivers Train for Electric Cars, Kenya’s Farmers Find Seedlings Nearby, Accra’s WhatsApp Sellers Get Organised, and Detroit and Philadelphia Neighbours Teach Each Other Tech

A new tool only matters when a person knows how to use it and trusts it enough to try. This month, across Africa and Black America, the most hopeful tech stories were not about giant funding rounds. They were about skills passing from hand to hand. In Freetown, young people are learning to drive and care for electric cars and to win online work. In Kenya, a seedling nursery is using a phone chat to help farmers find healthy plants near their farms. In Accra, sellers who already run their shops on WhatsApp are trying tools that keep orders and payments in one place. And in Detroit and North Philadelphia, students and neighbours are sitting side by side with elders and other residents until the screen stops feeling strange. Different places, one question: who is teaching the next person?

What is happening on the ground

Freetown: young drivers and freelancers get ready (Oct 12 to 21)

On 21 October, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Sierra Leone announced that 100 young Sierra Leoneans had begun an orientation to become drivers for Sierra Ride, an electric mobility initiative run with the Ministry of Youth Affairs and the Armed Forces Technical and Education College (AFTEC). An initial fleet of 50 electric vehicles is set to operate in Freetown. When the ministry and UNDP opened recruitment in June, they described Sierra Ride as a ride-hailing service and encouraged women to apply, Sierraloaded reported.

The two-week programme is led through AFTEC, using the training facilities of the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces. Training Commander Issa Bangura outlined the course: electric vehicle operation, road safety, basic maintenance and responsible vehicle management. UNDP says it also stresses financial literacy and careful management of income. Daily Scope reports that the trainees were selected from across the country and that the training includes battery charging. A director speaking for the Minister of Youth Affairs called Sierra Ride more than a transport project: a way for young people to earn sustainable incomes, become financially independent and take part in a greener economy. As UNDP put it, “the future of mobility is not only electric. It is driven by people.”

Earlier in the month, 60 young people began the third cohort of Learn2Earn, a four-week digital freelancing programme run by the Ministry of Communication, Technology and Innovation with UNICEF Sierra Leone and the International Trade Centre, through the KOICA Ready Salone Project. The group includes university students, young workers and participants from the provinces, and women make up more than half. Participants learn to use freelance platforms and complete weekly paid tasks called “bounties.” “You were not selected just to start training; you were selected to start earning. When you are skilled and connected, your talent is not limited by where you live,” Permanent Secretary Stevenson K. Kamanda told them. According to the ministry, 30 of the 60 people in the second cohort won six bounty challenges, and some former participants have gone on to freelance for international clients.

Kenya: seedlings from a nursery near the farm (Oct 16)

Ask a Kenyan vegetable farmer where to find healthy tomato seedlings, and the answer is often a flood of messages in WhatsApp groups. “You will find a farmer looking for tomato seedlings posting the same request in several groups, even when there is a nursery close to their farm,” Godfrey Mwenda told the Daily Nation. Mwenda is a director of PremaGrow Vegetable Seedlings Nursery, which has operated for close to a decade in Meru, Machakos and Kajiado, and chief executive of its new platform, OnLima.

OnLima works through WhatsApp. A farmer opens the website on a smartphone and is passed to a WhatsApp chat, where an automated assistant asks for the crop, the quantity and the farmer’s location. It then lists suitable seedling suppliers within about 50 kilometres, with contact details, so the farmer and the nursery can agree on price and delivery directly. Mwenda says nurseries are checked before they are listed and that farmers can rate the service they receive. At the Nairobi International Trade Fair in early October, OnLima had signed up about 47 seedling propagators across Kenya and was preparing further pilots, according to the company. (The trade fair ran from 28 September to 4 October 2026.) The platform has support from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology and CGIAR, the Nation reports.

The Nation adds a fair warning: the platform will only be as good as its recommendations, its location data and the seedlings that listed nurseries actually have. Farmers should still weigh local forecasts, soil, water and the advice of qualified agricultural experts.

Four places, one question: who is teaching the next person?

Accra: WhatsApp shops get a till and a ledger (Oct 7 to 24)

On any given day, hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians run a business from a personal WhatsApp account, writes Joshua Eyram Wordey in a GhanaWeb column: product photos on their status, prices in direct messages, orders confirmed by voice note and payment sent to a personal mobile money number. Keeping track of who has paid often comes down to screenshots, a notebook and memory.

StashUp Kiosk, built by Accra-based Zongo Technologies, lets a seller set up a simple online storefront and share the link on WhatsApp, Instagram or Facebook. Customers browse and pay by MTN MoMo, Telecel Cash or AirtelTigo without downloading an app, and orders and payments land in one place. According to the column, it is free to open and list products, with a 1.5 percent fee on completed sales. “We are trying to be exactly the right thing for Ghana,” founder Gimbala Sankare said.

*The StashUp Kiosk details and quote come from a single source, a GhanaWeb opinion column, and have not been independently confirmed.

Another Ghanaian startup, Tralo Technologies, says more than 3,300 businesses have registered on its free business-management app since it launched in July, recording sales, stock and expenses. According to the company, as reported by TechReviewAfrica, more than 1,200 were actively using it by October. Tralo said many traders wanted digital tools but worried about who would control their business data, which is why it calls its free model “a trust strategy.” Tralo also says something every trader will appreciate: sign-ups alone do not prove lasting use. “The consequential question is whether businesses keep using the platform,” the company said. These figures come from the companies themselves. (Tralo’s user numbers are the company’s own claims, reported by a single outlet, TechReviewAfrica, and not independently confirmed.)

Detroit and North Philadelphia: neighbours teach each other (Oct 8 to 21)

In Detroit, the Intergenerational Wisdom Exchange (WiSE) at Wayne State University has paired Black older adults in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties with students who live nearby, for a ten-week programme that runs until about Thanksgiving. Programme director Dr. Rodlescia Sneed, an assistant professor at Wayne State’s Institute of Gerontology, told WDET that many older adults are not comfortable speaking up in a group when they do not understand a device, so the learning happens one-on-one. The first half of the programme is spent sharing life stories, which the students write down and return to the elders as family records. The second half is digital skills. “We see divides both in access to technology and comfort with use of technology. We’re trying to close that racial gap,” Sneed said.

In North Philadelphia, Temple University’s Community Gateway has trained 27 residents as digital literacy ambassadors through a city-funded project, according to the university. Navigators Keiyona Abdullah and Ramond Nelson have connected about 4,526 people to the city’s digital resources. Carol Williams, a retired North Philadelphia native, took a free daytime computer class for adults aged 50 and over and went home with a refurbished computer. “They provided an atmosphere where you felt comfortable asking any question,” she said. She now spreads the word at her union, at a nearby recreation centre and at meetings of the Black women’s educational group she belongs to. Another ambassador, Sacharja Cunningham, now teaches reading, writing and smartphone skills to adults at the Kingsessing Library. (The Temple figures and accounts come from Temple University’s own news office, Temple Now, and have not been independently confirmed.)

Lessons we can carry

Training is part of the technology. Fifty electric cars mean little without drivers who can charge, maintain and budget for them. Freetown is building the people first.
Meet people where they already are. Kenyan farmers and Ghanaian sellers already live on WhatsApp. The tools that stand a chance start there instead of asking everyone to learn something new.
Ask who holds your data. Ghana’s traders are right to ask what happens to their sales records. Read the terms and the fees before you move your shop onto any app.
One-on-one beats a crowded classroom. Detroit and Philadelphia show that patience, a neighbour’s face and permission to ask “silly” questions turn a nervous beginner into a teacher.

Ways to pass a skill on

Encouragement

This week, sit with one elder and help them do one thing on their phone that they have been afraid to try, then ask them to tell you a story from their life in return. If you run a small business, write down where your sales and payment records really live. Technology lifts a community when the people who learn it turn around and teach the next person.

Watch: when Sierra Ride’s electric cars reach Freetown’s streets and how the new drivers fare; how many Learn2Earn participants win paid work; whether OnLima’s pilots grow beyond its first nurseries; and whether Accra’s sellers keep using the new tools after the first few months.