Technology talents from Nigeria are expected to join over 150,000 youths across the Africa at the Africa Code Week (ACW) promoted German technology company, SAP.
Africa Code Week is an initiative by SAP that seeks to empower African youth with the coding skills to thrive in their career and become key actors of Africa‘s economic development.
Organisers of ACW says the idea is to foster digital literacy and equip the continent’s rising generation with job-relevant skills.
According to SAP, the programme will run October 15–23, 2016, with thousands of free coding workshops and online training offered to children and youth aged 8 to 24.
SAP says it has joined forces with hundreds of partners spanning local African governments, non-profit organizations, NGOs, educational institutions and businesses including the Cape Town Science Centre, the Galway Education Centre, Google, AMPION, the King Baudouin Foundation and ATOS.
The initiative will run in Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
According to Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Minister of Youth and ICT in Rwanda, “today’s literacy should go beyond just knowing how to read and write, even beyond digital literacy, knowing how to use computers. Basic literacy for the next generation should be about coding,”
According to Franck Cohen, president, SAP Europe, Middle East and Africa, “coding skills are the basis to success in the digital economy,”
“Africa Code Week is an impactful initiative to bridge today’s skills gap in Africa, empowering young people for successful careers and equipping businesses for sustainable growth. We are proud to spearhead this initiative working together with hundreds of local and international partners from the public and private sector,” Cohen says.
SAP says Africa Code Week 2016 workshops for younger age groups (8–11, 12–17) will be based on Scratch, a learning platform developed by the MIT Media Lab to simplify coding.
According to the company, students will learn coding basics and program their own animations, quizzes and games. Those aged 18 to 24 will be offered a workshop called “Introduction to Web Technologies” (for HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, SQL), which will give them a basic understanding of typical website architecture while teaching them how to create a fully operational, mobile-friendly website.
SAP also noted that critical to the success of the programme is the training of thousands of teachers, parents and educators across the 30 African countries. Before the start of the program, SAP says it will conduct thousands of train-the-trainer sessions to help prepare them.
The Africa Code week was launched by SAP and partners in 2015 where according to the company, 89,000 youth were introduced to coding by 1,500 trained trainers across 17 countries in 10 days.
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