Africa Code Week 2019
12 September 2019
The fifth edition of Africa Code Week was launched on the eve of this year’s World Economic Forum Africa in Cape Town, with the actual Africa Code Week in South Africa planned from 4 to 18 October 2019.
Spearheaded by software company SAP in 2015, Africa Code Week is a digital skills development initiative that has benefitted over 4 million youth across 37 African countries so far.
The aim is to instill digital literacy and coding skills in the young generation, working closely with private, public and non-profit partners to drive sustainable learning impact across Africa. (https://africacodeweek.org/)
Western Cape Education Minister Debbie Schäfer was one of the keynote speakers at the launch. She said it was extremely exciting to see our youth engaged and excited about coding and technology. “After all, they are the future – and they will determine the future innovations to come as we travel even faster into this rapidly changing era popularly named the ‘4th industrial revolution’.”
Schäfer said that schools in the province have gone far in changing their mindsets about technology and great strides have been made to make it the norm in many of our schools.
“By focusing on e-learning we have created the environment for our schools to take their own initiatives. Even though coding is not part of the formal curriculum yet, I was amazed that we have about 80 coding clubs in the Western Cape already!”
Meanwhile, free Train the Trainer coding workshops are offered for teachers at the Cape Town Science Centre from 13 – 15 September (Friday, Saturday or Sunday).
The workshops will address the following:
- How to teach coding/computer programming using SCRATCH (free software).
- How to organise a coding/computer programming workshop for learners aged 8 to 16 years old.
- How to organise workshops for learners during the actual Africa Code Week in South Africa from 4 to 18 October 2019.
For bookings, please email your name, school, preferred date and workshop time, as well as your contact details to: info@ctsc.org.za or call the CTSC on +27 21 300 3200.
We encourage Western Cape teachers to continue to register to take part in the free “Train the Trainer” workshops. Participating teachers will be given free resources, refreshments and a certificate of attendance.
