Denis Opudo
Africa Code Week is an award-winning initiative that is aimed at training youth aged between 18 to 25 years in Africa in cording. The program was launched in 2015 by Galway Education Centre in collaboration with SAP CSR EMEA and Cape Town Science Centre. The program has been able to receive support from various bodies like UNESCO YouthMobile, Google, and German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), fifteen governments from Africa, more than 100 partners and 100 ambassadors from the continent.
The 2017 event saw almost 300, 000 youths from West Africa taking part in the number of female recorded at 42.7%. The increase was subject to the increase in the urge of participation by the governments within the region. The governments aimed at instilling digital skills within their youths. Africa Code Week had set a target of training 500, 000 youths from all over Africa by the end of 2017 but they managed to hit above their set target. The platform managed to train 1.3 million youths from 35 countries instilling in them the basic coding skills making 203% increase from 2016 figures which recorded almost 427, 000 youths from 30 countries trained.
German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) launched a #eSkills4girls initiative which is aimed at increasing the number of women in the digital world. The initiative gave 20grands to 20 groups, improving digital skills and employment prospects for 8, 259 girls and women in developing and third world countries. Africa Code week and one of its partners UNESCO managed to join the initiative in 2017. The workshop has registered an average participation of 43% of women who participated in 2017, and this proves that there is a big increment in the number of women working to narrow the gap between them and the male in the digital world.
The number of female employment in the digital companies is at 30%, and this calls for those reliable to work out on the solutions on how the numbers should go up. When there is a combined effort from both the male and female sides, there will be obviously a rapid improvement in the African economic growth. In 2017 program, Cameroon took the first slot overall with engagement ratio of 1, 622 youths out of a population of 100, 000 and a total of above 390, 000 youths taught the coding skills and Morocco came second with 378, 000 in overall participation. In the engagement ratio category, Mauritius came second with 1,545 youths engaged, and Botswana came third with 1, 168 youths engaged out of an overall number of 100, 000.
