Education2 min read
TakeNoLab
Also known as TakenoLAB, Takenolab, TakeNo Lab
A free technology school founded by Remy Gakwaya in 2015 outside the Dzaleka gates, teaching digital skills, online freelancing, and entrepreneurship to refugees and Malawians.
Overview
TakeNoLab is a technology school with operations in the Katudza sector near the gates of Dzaleka in Dowa District. Remy Gakwaya, a Burundian who lived in the camp as a refugee, founded it in 2015. Its courses — digital skills, online freelancing, and software development — are offered to refugees and Malawians at no cost.
The Wilson Center’s profile of the camp describes TakeNoLab as one of the refugee-led initiatives that residents built themselves, rather than programmes brought in from outside. It grew out of the same work covered in Gakwaya’s own entry, where early students sometimes practised typing on printed keyboard diagrams because the group had too few computers.
Leadership after 2022
Gakwaya was resettled to the United States in 2022. The Wilson Center reports that the school continued under his remote supervision and the local direction of Deborah Ntakirutimana, a Burundian who has been a refugee since infancy. Its own reporting counts more than two thousand students trained; that figure comes from the organisation.
Academic Significance and Spatial Mobility
Academic research on Dzaleka (Stammen 2025) highlights TakeNoLab as a key example of how digital technology functions as a form of “spatial relocation” for young refugees:
- Transcending Encampment: By teaching digital skills and remote freelancing, TakeNoLab enables students to earn income from global clients, allowing them to transcend the physical restrictions of encampment laws (“my body is in the camp, but my mind is free”).
- Katudza Sector Hub: Located in Katudza alongside other community organisations, TakeNoLab forms part of an emerging institutional and educational sector within the camp’s social geography.
Related work
TakeNoLab is one of several refugee-founded technology education initiatives in and around Dzaleka, alongside the Dzaleka AppFactory and ADAI Circle. It was the local partner for the 2022 Dzaleka Mapping Project, helping recruit young people who knew the camp to map its buildings, water points, and services.
References
Sources
- 1Waiting in Dzaleka Refugee Camp - Agency through self- and community organisation
University of Applied Sciences Erfurt / DB-Thüringen, 31 January 2025
Master's thesis documenting TakeNoLab's role in digital education, Katudza hub, and remote freelancing as spatial agency.
- 2
- 3
- 4TakenoLab opens a new center in Dzaleka
Face of Malawi, 24 May 2021
Related entries
People
Remy Gakwaya
Burundian technologist and educator who founded TakeNoLab in Dzaleka and helped expand access to coding and digital skills in the camp.
Education
Dzaleka AppFactory
A software-development training programme launched in Dzaleka in 2017 through Microsoft 4Afrika and UNHCR's Connectivity for Refugees initiative.
Education
ADAI Circle
A refugee-founded technology education organisation established in Dzaleka in 2020, teaching artificial intelligence, data science, and software development, with an innovation hub that offers internet access.
Education
Education in Dzaleka
Public, private, community, and post-secondary education in Dzaleka, including the Malawi curriculum and long-running scholarship and digital-learning programmes.
Infrastructure
Dzaleka Mapping Project
A MapMalawi initiative that combined drones, OpenStreetMap, field mapping, and community training to document buildings and essential services at Dzaleka.
Institution
Refugee-led organisations in Dzaleka
Organisations founded or led by refugees that provide education, advocacy, technology, livelihoods, arts, protection, and mutual support within Dzaleka and beyond.
History
Waiting in Dzaleka Refugee Camp: Agency through Self- and Community Organisation
A 2025 Master's thesis by Anna-Lena Stammen (University of Applied Sciences Erfurt) analyzing refugee agency, waiting, coping mechanisms, social space mapping, and refugee-led organisations under Malawi's encampment policy.
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