Two days at Orange Digital Center Botswana, 22 to 23 September 2026, teaching a room of beginners and entrepreneurs how to build software by talking to AI, and how to tell when what the AI built is wrong.
The workshop ran in ODC’s Coding School as its Vibe Coding Essentials masterclass. It started from one idea: vibe coding isn’t about telling AI to build an app. It’s about being able to tell whether the thing AI built is actually good.
The programme moved from what AI coding tools can actually do, to the vibe coding mindset, to briefing AI like a product manager: context, requirements, constraints, edge cases, and how you’ll know it’s finished. Then came the checks. Five data protection questions to answer before shipping anything that collects personal information, under Botswana’s Data Protection Act, 2024, and the habit of not trusting a success message until there’s evidence behind it.
The hands-on part was breaking an imaginary booking app on purpose: two people booking the same slot, a form submitted twice, the internet dropping mid-payment. Good product thinking means designing for what actually happens, not only the happy path.
The line it closed on: you don’t need to know how to write every line of code. You do need to know when the code is wrong. Participants rated the session 4.53 out of 5 in the post-event survey, asked for longer sessions next time, and left with an ODC certificate of participation.
