An AI sandbox is a controlled, secure environment where organizations without deep technical infrastructure can learn AI concepts, experiment with open-source models, and build working prototypes with expert support, without needing to build that infrastructure themselves from the ground up.
Technical capacity is unevenly distributed. Organizations with the deepest knowledge of a community’s needs, gender-based violence services, health access programmes, economic justice work, rarely have in-house AI engineers. Without a shared, supported space to build, these organizations either depend indefinitely on external technologists or are excluded from shaping AI entirely. A sandbox breaks that dependency cycle.
The A+ Alliance approach: The Gender & AI Innovation Collective is building the Feminist AI Innovation Sandbox: a secure, human rights-focused environment with open-source AI models and development tools, serving both as a learning space and a building space where organizations maintain ownership of what they create. Code for Africa maintains the underlying shared infrastructure, including open source large language models and a library of templatised prompt scripts.
Related projects
Gender & AI Innovation Collective, Code for Africa, Our Ecosystem
Related resources
Algorithms 101 Webinar Series, 2026 Call for Applications, Global Directory
