AI Essentials

Remove the fear, meet the real tools, and get your first wins the same week.

• Day 1 — What AI is & the big players: a live wow-demo where we turn a student's own business idea into a flyer, a caption and a short promo video, then generative AI explained with no jargon.
• The tools you will actually use: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Meta AI inside WhatsApp, plus Perplexity, the AI that answers with sources so you can verify what it says.
• The Nigerian context and safety basics: how local freelancers and businesses use AI to compete globally, and what you must never paste into AI (passwords, BVN, customer data, company secrets).
• Day 2 — Account setup & first wins: create ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity accounts, install the phone apps, and tour chat, file and image uploads, and voice mode.
• Hands-on lab: complete 3 real tasks from your own life or work, such as a customer reply, a price list or a WhatsApp business description. Deliverable: 3 tasks with screenshots on the portal.

The core skill of the whole course, plus research tools that save you hours.

• Day 1 — The perfect prompt: the Role, Task, Context, Format framework with bad-versus-good examples, prompt chaining to build on answers, and why AI is sometimes confidently wrong.
• Live challenge: the class fixes a weak prompt together and compares the before and after outputs, and you learn to fact-check answers with Perplexity.
• Day 2 — NotebookLM: upload documents or dense material and turn your sources into an AI-hosted audio summary you can play out loud like a podcast.
• Perplexity for market research: ask things like 'Who are my competitors in Yola, and what do customers complain about?'
• Hands-on lab: build your own library of 10+ prompts for your business or job. Deliverable: the prompt library plus one NotebookLM summary of a real document.

Put AI to work on real office tasks, spreadsheets, slides and visuals.

• Day 1 — Office work on autopilot: drafting and negotiating emails, replying to difficult customers, and summarising long threads.
• Julius AI: chat with your spreadsheets and get real insight from your own numbers (for example, 'Which product sells most? Which month was worst?'), plus AI-generated Excel and Google Sheets formulas.
• Meeting notes: record and transcribe a meeting with Otter, then turn it into clean minutes and action points.
• Day 2 — Presentations & visuals in minutes: build a full deck straight from text with Gamma, and auto-generate charts, diagrams, mind maps and infographics with Napkin AI.
• Hands-on lab: build a 5-slide business pitch with Gamma and one Napkin diagram. Deliverable: a before/after of one real task, plus the pitch deck.

Create a complete marketing campaign for your own business, end to end.

• Day 1 — Marketing with AI: human-sounding sales copy, captions and WhatsApp broadcasts, with Nigerian tone and pidgin where it fits.
• Google Pomelli to build a brand profile and editable branded creatives from a website, professional product photos from ordinary phone pictures, and Canva AI and Ideogram for flyers and posters with readable text.
• Spotting deepfakes and staying honest: how to recognise fake content, and why you never fake reviews or results.
• Day 2 — Video & voice: CapCut AI for auto captions, script-to-video and TikTok and Reels templates, AI voiceovers for ads, text-to-video options, and a simple one-page business website with Gamma.
• Hands-on lab: build a mini campaign for your own business. Deliverable: 3 posts, 1 flyer and 1 short video.

Turn the skills into income, get hired, and graduate with a real campaign.

• Day 1 — Getting paid with AI: set up Upwork and Fiverr profiles, learn which AI services sell (flyers, captions, presentations, data cleanup), how to price as a beginner, and how to write winning proposals with AI.
• Selling locally: offer the same services to Yola shops, schools and clinics, using your Week 4 campaign as your sample work.
• Get hired: build a CV and cover letter with AI, optimise your LinkedIn, and do one AI mock interview with PrepSync, where submitting your readiness score is part of graduating.
• Build a daily AI workflow: the 3 to 4 tools to keep using every day from now on.
• Day 2 — Capstone: present a complete marketing campaign or business proposal built with AI using a Gamma deck, get class feedback, and receive your certificate.