#ASKmobile Lab – Knowledge on Wheels
From workshops under mango trees to hands-on media sessions in the heart of Rhino Camp, the #ASKmobile Lab brings knowledge directly to the people. More than a vehicle, it’s a floating classroom—a bridge connecting creativity, technology, and community action across refugee and host settlements in Northern Uganda.
Challenges
Refugees in Uganda face challenges finding sustainable livelihoods due to limited access to information, communication, and marketable skills. The lack of vocational training centers and the geographical distances involved prevent refugees, especially women, from acquiring necessary skills.
Learning on the Move
In regions where access to digital tools, reliable internet, and creative training spaces are limited, mobility is a form of innovation. The #ASKmobile Lab was born from a simple but powerful idea: if communities can’t get to the lab, the lab will come to them.
How might we co-create: #ASKmobile is a mobile learning project offering specialized workshops in (digital) media making / ICT competencies, and promoting self-reliance through hands-on repair of electronics, and upcycling clothing.
The #ASKmobile Lab is equipped with laptops, solar power, audio kits, and training materials to transform any location into a temporary makerspace. It travels across settlements such as Ofua 2 and Omugo 4 in Rhino Camp, carrying open knowledge and practical skills to communities eager to learn, create, and connect.
Floating Knowledge in Action
Each stop of the mobile lab becomes a creative hub. Participants gather to learn podcasting, digital storytelling, community media production, and repair skills. Local trainers, themselves participants in #ASKtraining workshops, guide sessions for specific tools and skills, using open-source curricula shared through the #ASKtraining platform and documented in GitHub repositories.
This open approach—where learning materials, manuals, and step-by-step guides are shared freely—ensures that anyone can replicate and adapt the model. The mobile lab’s OER (Open Educational Resources) framework builds a living archive of practical community innovation: from media literacy to hardware repair and sustainable design.
Launch Event
Featuring music and dance the #ASKmobile launch was lively and engaging, deeply resonating with audiences in the refugee camp and beyond. Media production, electronics repair and clothing upcycling workshops were held, with stakeholders + community signing a charter of support to #ASKmobile & the project objectives.
Guided tours showcased the essential resources that will be utilized in the project, including the #ASKotec toolkit, Labmobile, and open educational resources. Community members were offered the opportunity to experience, ask questions, and test various equipment during these sessions.
Performances by Franko Lokunyumi from Yei, Central Equatoria, a musician with close to 1 million views on YouTube, whose music focuses on preserving culture and highlighting the struggles of refugees in Uganda. At the #ASKmobile launch event, Franko shared how the KIFAYA workshops (Kifaya translates as ‘Enough!’ in Arabic) by the #defyhatenow initiative transformed his artistic career, inspiring others to join Platform Africa’s #ASKmobile initiative.
From Doubt to Empowerment — Anna’s Story
When the #ASKmobile Lab rolled into Ofua 2 for a training supported by #ASKnet in 2024, 24-year-old Anna Sunday, a South Sudanese refugee mother, joined the media training workshop with little expectation. “I didn’t take the training seriously,” she recalls. “I thought it wouldn’t help me.”
But months later, the skills she gained—radio presentation, storytelling, and podcast production—opened unexpected doors. When she returned to South Sudan, Anna found work presenting radio programs and mentoring others on how to host community dialogues. The small earnings from her radio work helped her start a food stall in her settlement, marking the first time she’d earned income through her own skills.
“That business I got (started) through Platform Africa and the knowledge they gave me. Through the skills, I went and used them, and that has made me become who I am today.”
Her favorite phrase, “cook your mind,” has become a rallying call: a reminder to other refugees that knowledge itself can be a livelihood. “It’s time to also cook your mind so that you become stronger. Don’t depend on this organization. They have given you the skills but go and look for your ways. Cook your mind. What should I do? You have to ask yourself questions so that you can also be somebody. So this is my message to everyone and above all, I really appreciate platform Africa for the work they are doing and it is our prayer that they keep going.”
Why It Matters
The #ASKmobile Lab embodies what #ASKnet stands for—Access, Skills, and Knowledge. By moving learning to where it’s needed most, it helps people reclaim agency in how they learn, share, and tell their stories. The mobile format bridges the digital divide not with grand infrastructure but with adaptability, openness, and trust.
Workshops like the one that reached Anna are replicated across refugee settlements through the #ASKnet ecosystem. The training can also generate new documentation, uploaded to GitHub for others to use. This cycle of learning-by-doing ensures that knowledge doesn’t end with one project, as it circulates, ripples out and grows, building new skills and knowledge that belongs to everyone.
A Network on the Move
The #ASKmobile Lab is more than a van or a toolkit, it’s a philosophy of movement and inclusion. Each journey adds another link in the network of community storytellers, repairers, and digital creators across Uganda, Kenya and South Sudan.
Carrying knowledge on wheels, the #ASKmobile illustrates that the future of learning isn’t fixed to classrooms, bound by universities or held only in makerspaces. These tools and skills travel with the people, adapting to their needs, and sparking a constellation of new voices ready to shape their own narratives.
#ASKmobile Lab
A collaboration between Platform Africa, CC4D, GIG and the #ASKnet community.