Now in its second year running, SAP’s Africa Code Week aims to train more than 150,000 youth in 30 African countries this year from October 15 – 23, 2016, with thousands of free coding workshops and online trainings offered to children and youth aged 8 to 24.
Africa Code Week aims to foster digital literacy and equip the continent’s rising generation with job-relevant digital skills.
“Today 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,’ commented Jean Philbert Nsengimana, The Minister of Youth and ICT of the government of Rwanda.
The World Economic Forum estimates that Africa’s growth will be just below 5% this year as the global economy continues to suffer. The continent has the fastest growing digital consumer market and the largest working-age population in the world. At the same time, African companies are scrambling to fill positions with employees who possess the right digital skills. Only one percent of African children leave school with basic coding skills.
Africa Code Week 2016 workshops for younger aged groups (8-11, 12-17) will be based on Scratch, a learning platform developed by the MIT Media Lab to simplify coding. Students will learn coding basics and program their own animations, quizzes, and games. Ages 18 and 24 will be taught Introduction to Web Technologies (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, SQL), a workshop that will give them a basic understanding of typical website architecture while teaching them how to create a fully operational, mobile-friendly website.
Apart from SAP, other partners include 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.
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