Dennis Kriel

AI courses in South Africa: a free webinar or a hands-on course?

By Dennis Kriel · · 2 min read

AI courses in South Africa range from free one-hour webinars to university programmes that run for months. For a business owner, the useful question is not "which course is best?" but "what do I need to be able to do on Monday morning?"

What to look for in an AI course for business

  • Your own work, not examples. The most useful courses have you work on your real business: your marketing, your sales pipeline, your admin.
  • Tools you will actually use. ChatGPT and Claude for writing and thinking, Canva AI for design, Make.com or n8n for automation. Ask which tools are covered and whether you set them up yourself.
  • Small groups. Hands-on work needs help when something doesn't behave. Ask how many people attend.
  • Something to take away. Prompts, working automations and a plan are worth more than slides.
  • An honest certificate. Most short courses give a certificate of completion. That records that you attended. It is not an accredited qualification. If accreditation matters to you (for example CPD points), ask for the accrediting body by name.

The main kinds of AI course

  1. Free webinars. A good first step: an hour or so on what AI can do for a business like yours, with time for questions. You learn what's possible, but you don't build anything.
  2. Online, self-paced courses. Flexible and often cheap, but many people never finish them, and nobody checks your work.
  3. In-person short courses (one or two days). You build things during the day with an instructor in the room. They cost more and take a day out of the business, but you leave with tools that work.
  4. University and business-school programmes. Broad and often strategic, over weeks or months. They suit managers who need a qualification more than owners who need results this quarter.

Where Dennis Kriel's AI courses fit

Dennis runs two options. The free AI webinar is a live online session of about 60 to 75 minutes, plus questions, on practical ways South African businesses use AI.

The AI Masterclass is a full-day, in-person AI course with at most 20 people. Over five modules (strategy, marketing, sales, operations and automation, and building your own AI sales agent), you work on your own business and leave with 12 prompts, three working automations, a 90-day AI plan and a certificate of completion.

Questions to ask before you book any AI course

  • What will I have built by the end of the day?
  • Which tools will we use, and do I need paid accounts?
  • How many people attend, and who helps when I get stuck?
  • What support is there afterwards?
  • What is the refund and transfer policy?

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