Sankofa Kings: Stepping Into Tomorrow

This June, Kingmakers of Oakland launched Sankofa Kings, a brand-new summer residency where culture meets advanced technology. Over the first two weeks, our cohort of 26 brilliant young Black men has completely hit the ground running. Moving from passive consumers of tech to true digital architects, these young men are proving that ancestral wisdom is the ultimate blueprint for innovation.

The cohort has organized into multi-generational "Tribes" utilizing a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) framework. They aren’t just coding in a vacuum; they have been actively auditing their own Oakland neighborhoods to identify real-world systemic "bugs." The Kings are moving incredibly fast, in just their third week in the 6 week intensive program, they are now stepping directly into prompt engineering, mastering advanced generative AI tools to design and build functional MVP software solutions specifically engineered to patch those neighborhood issues.

Everything they are building right now is leading up to a massive milestone. On Friday, July 24th, the cohort will step out of the lab to present their final working prototypes at the Sankofa Kings Community Showcase. We are incredibly excited to announce that this final presentation will be hosted at the Kapor Center, an institution deeply aligned with our mission of tech equity.

At the showcase, our Kings will pitch their software tools directly to a panel of experienced tech and AI professionals, receiving real-world industry feedback. Stay tuned for official times as we prepare to celebrate these future leaders stepping boldly into tomorrow!