Learning Lions Campus
The campus

The Campus

What the campus is, where it is, who owns what, and the words we use.

Updated 24 October 2026

The Learning Lions campus from the air: three terracotta buildings with tall wind towers around an acacia tree, paths between the rocks, and the green plain of Lake Turkana's shore behind
The campus beside Lake Turkana, from the air.

What It Is

Learning Lions runs a residential ICT campus beside Lake Turkana in Turkana County, northern Kenya, near Loropio, in the Lodwar area. Young adults from rural and refugee communities come here to learn digital skills and work from where they live. The mission, in the organisation's own words, is to enable young adults in impoverished rural areas of Eastern Africa to work and to live a life full of opportunity while remaining in their home area. The campus is meant to be a place to learn, earn and innovate.

The training runs in three levels. Mobile LEAP teaches digital literacy on phones; its learners are explorers. BootCamp teaches a track on laptops over eight weeks; its learners are trainees, and they live on campus while they train. The Advanced Track is self-led specialisation, apprenticeships and partner work. Everyone who has come through is a Lion. The Hub carries the training material for all three.

The campus is run as one integrated organisation with shared governance, leadership, departments and teams, although the people on it are employed by different legal entities.

EntityWhereWhat it holds
Learning Lions gUGGermanyThe training programme. Owns the ICT Center. A United States arm is being established
Startup Lions Assets Kenya Ltd (SLAK)KenyaHolds the campus lease and runs campus operations: housing, kitchen, water, power, security, transport, the shop
Lions Strength (LS)KenyaA community-based organisation: community programmes and the project supporting Loropio Girls Secondary School
Startup Lions GmbH and Digital LionsGermany and the campusThe digital enterprise and apprenticeship arm, working from the coworking space

In 2025 the management of SLAK and Lions Strength was merged into one team and Learning Lions was integrated into campus operations, to cut overhead and move from the founder-led years to a Kenyan-led decade. The structure page shows the result.

What Is on the Campus

  1. The ICT Center: training rooms and a coworking space, owned by Learning Lions and run by the IT Center Department.
  2. Student housing in the South East Village, with four trainees to a room. Staff and volunteer houses, and seven guest units for visitors and digital nomads, in the South West Village. Experimental units called Tech Manyattas and Concept Houses.
  3. A central kitchen with a cafeteria, serving trainees, staff and guests. A bistro at the ICT Center and a small restaurant for outside visitors are planned.
  4. The Eco Market, the campus shop for essential goods.
  5. A solar mini-grid with battery storage and a diesel backup, which also powers Loropio Girls Secondary School and nearby community projects.
  6. Boreholes, tanks and pipelines that supply the campus, the school, agricultural projects and part of the neighbouring community.
  7. A hardware store, construction vehicles and a maintenance workshop; a welcome area with the central store where procured goods arrive; a security gate.
  8. Mufasa, the campus NAS, where the training content and each trainee's folder live, reached by mapped network drives and synced to Google Drive.

Words We Use

SayNotWhy
traineeexplorer, studentBootCamp's learner
explorertraineeMobile LEAP's learner
Lionalumnus, graduateAnyone who has come through
Mufasathe drive, the serverThe campus NAS; Google Drive is its cloud copy, written in full
the SAsIT, the techsThe System Admins, who run campus ICT
The Hubthe LMShub.learninglions.org, the training material

The material describes the campus by its villages, buildings and services; it gives no address, no site size and no head count. Those lines wait for a source.