The Threadbare programme sits at the intersection of education, game development, and workforce inclusion, designed to help young people move from consuming digital content to actively creating it. Built by Endless Access, it uses open-source game environments to teach creative and technical skills while simultaneously producing real, usable digital assets. Instead of separating learning from application, the programme embeds skill development directly into the process of building and modifying a game world.
This approach has become increasingly relevant in the context of Africa’s growing digital economy and persistent youth unemployment. Across the continent, there is a rising demand for creators, designers, and digital collaborators, but traditional education systems often do not provide structured pathways into these roles. Threadbare attempts to bridge this gap by combining microcredentials, portfolio-based learning, and hands-on contribution to live game projects, making skills both visible and verifiable.
The interview also comes in the context of broader regional conversations around games, technology, and development. At the recent Games & SDG Summit held in Nairobi, stakeholders from across Africa’s game development, education, and innovation sectors gathered to explore how games can contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Discussions focused on how interactive media can be used not just for entertainment, but for learning, economic empowerment, and social impact—an agenda closely aligned with the philosophy behind Threadbare. Heather Drolet, Director of Learning Programs at Endless Access, the team behind the Threadbare programme takes us through the programme.
1. What problem is Threadbare actually solving for young people in Africa?
Across Africa there are millions of young people with genuine creative talent. But many of these future visual storytellers, world-builders, collaborators and technical innovators don’t have access to a structured pathway from that talent to recognition and a paycheck. Traditional tech education tends to be focused on a singular discipline, and often assumes a level of prerequisite knowledge and skill. We start by asking learners to play Threadbare and ask themselves: what if I made part of this? We’re solving for the gap between curiosity and credential, and between credential and participation in a digital economy.
2. Youth unemployment across Africa remains high despite strong creative talent. How does your model translate that into real income?
We think about this in three layers. The first is the credential. Learners who complete our programs earn industry-recognized microcredentials issued in partnership with Arizona State University. The second is the portfolio. Because learners contribute real assets to a real open-source game, they leave with verifiable proof of work. The third is the pipeline. Our platform is explicitly designed as a Consumer to Creator to Contributor to Career journey. We’re building the infrastructure for digital and future-ready skills to become visible and hirable. The games industry in Africa is growing. The broader digital workforce – UX, asset creation, project coordination, community management – is growing faster. We’re building for both.
3. Infrastructure gaps are a reality across the continent. How does Threadbare function where access to devices, internet, or power is limited?
Endless Access has always been focused on providing opportunities for learning digital skills in low-resource contexts, whether that is through our flagship offline operating system, Endless OS, or our accessible learning programs and the open-source tools that support them. Our Explore: Threadbare program is built to run in a web browser, which means no installation, lower hardware requirements, and compatibility with lower-spec machines. We also design our curriculum to function in a shared-device model, with activities structured around group work and rotation. In our Core: Threadbare and More: Threadbare programs, we lean on accessible tooling, like the free and open-source game engine Godot. We won’t pretend that we have a solution for every infrastructure challenge, but our philosophy is to meet learners where they are, not where we wish they were.
4. Many African families prioritize traditional career paths. What makes you confident this model can gain real acceptance?
Families are making rational decisions under real economic pressure. We aim clarify the workforce readiness outcomes of participation in programs that promote digital skill growth. When a young person finishes our program, they have a microcredential from ASU, a portfolio of contributed work, and measurable skill growth across creative thinking, analytical thinking, and technology literacy. The narrative shift from “just playing games” to “learning real-world skills” can be a concrete next step for families looking at opportunities for their children.
5. How does a user move from playing a game to acquiring skills the job market will pay for?
The journey runs from Consumer to Creator to Contributor to Career. A learner starts by playing Threadbare – an open-source adventure game built in Godot. From there, they begin modifying it: changing characters, writing dialogue, designing levels. That’s the Creator stage. As skills develop, they begin contributing original content, like pixel art, story quests, and sound, back to the game itself. That’s the Contributor stage. At every step, they’re earning experience points, unlocking badges, and building toward a microcredential. The skills acquire along the way – game design principles, collaborative production, version control, creative problem-solving – are directly transferable to roles in game development, digital media, UX, and project management. The game is the vehicle. The skills are the destination.
6. Are you building a pipeline for game developers, or a broader digital workforce?
Both, and we’re deliberate about that. Our skill framework covers five domains: Art, Engineering, Game Design, Go to Market, and Management and Production. Not everyone who goes through our programs will become a game developer, and we don’t need them to. A learner who discovers a talent for pixel art might end up in digital design. Someone who thrives in the project coordination side might end up in production or operations. Someone who engages deeply with the community and storytelling layer might end up in content or marketing. The game-making context is the common thread. It’s a rich, multi-disciplinary environment that maps naturally onto a wide range of real-world roles. We’re building a broad digital workforce that happens to know how games are made.
7. What changes when a young person shifts from consumer to creator, and why does that matter in this context?
A consumer asks “what does this do?” but a creator asks “what could this do?” That’s a fundamentally different orientation toward the world, and in contexts where young people have largely been on the receiving end of technology – using apps, platforms, and tools designed elsewhere – that reorientation is significant. We see it in the data and we see it in rooms. In El Salvador, we watched a student who had never opened Godot go from uncertainty to building custom pixel art assets and experimenting with game mechanics within a few sessions. In Jordan, high school girls who were told by their environment that this wasn’t for them went above and beyond, scripting entire projects and creating original characters and lore. When a young person realizes they can build the thing, not just use it, something changes. That’s the foundation everything else is built on.
8. What proof do you have that this leads to measurable outcomes, not just engagement?
We measure across three layers: platform analytics, experience point and progress data, and pre/post program surveys. In Jordan, learners showed a 108% increase in self-reported Godot proficiency and a 71% increase in GitHub/GitLab literacy over the course of the program – across roughly 1,375 learners in 50 schools. At Universidad Tecnológica del Perú, mentors and facilitators were rated a motivating factor by 92.9% of learners, and the microcredential drove 91.8% of learners to stay engaged even when personal obligations were their biggest external challenge. In our Black Girls Code programs in the US, career interest in the games industry rose 15% post-program. Engagement matters to us, but it’s not the metric. The metric is whether learners leave with verified skills, a credential, and a clearer path forward.
9. What needs to happen at policy and industry level to scale this across Africa?
We actually had this conversation directly – at an Endless Access convening in Nairobi in April, with 23 games industry professionals from across the continent. We talked about how studios can collaborate to develop capacity. What actually happens to kids after they get the skills? Are internships enough? The industry is asking great questions. What needs to follow is action on three fronts. First, recognition – microcredentials and portfolio-based credentials need to be accepted by employers and institutions as legitimate proof of skill. Second, infrastructure investment – not just devices and connectivity, but formal curriculum space in schools for digital skills and game making as a valid learning context. And third – studios and employers on the continent need to actively define what the pipeline looks like and be ready at the other end of it.
10. If this works, what does success look like in terms of jobs and economic mobility over the next decade?
Success is a generation of young people across Africa who entered the digital economy through a door that didn’t exist before – not through a traditional CS degree, not through luck, but through a structured, credentialed, community-supported pathway that started with a game. It’s hundreds of thousands of learners with verified portfolio work and industry-recognized credentials. It’s game studios and digital media companies on the continent that can hire locally because the talent pipeline is real and visible. It’s young women who were told this wasn’t for them, building careers that contradict that. And it’s the infrastructure – the platform, the open-source game, the contributor community – becoming something the next generation inherits and builds on. We’re a nonprofit. We’re not building this to sell it. We’re building it to hand it over.