About Africa Code Week
In recognition of the United Nations’ International Youth Day this week the Africa Code Week (ACW) initiative officially kicks off across the continent with a number of exciting changes and developments all aimed at empowering Africa’s youth with digital skills learning. Now in its sixth year, ACW is the largest digital literacy initiative on the continent. Over the last five years, the initiative has positively impacted millions of youth and thousands of teachers.
Introduced by SAP, UNESCO and partners in 2015, ACW aims to spark interest in coding through fun and interactive community workshops for youngsters. From the 88,000 students who participated in the first year, to the 3.85 million children and 39,000 teachers who ran +55,000 coding workshops in 37 countries last year, the impact of the initiative has grown significantly.
Africa Code Week wanted to create a robust and versatile mobile application to be used across Africa by students and teachers to equip young African students with the digital skills they need to navigate the digital age. An Android app and website were targeted to be developed by the team here at Greenfinch to provide easy access online and offline to content relating to Africa Code Week’s SCRATCH classes and curated resources.
Team Greenfinch,
As part of the ACW family we wanted to share this very simple but highly significant photograph which arrived overnight from Lesotho.
We are so proud to see a young African girl using our Irish developed app to teach a younger person how to code using Scratch resources which was also created in Ireland.
We want to thank you all for being such supportive, positive and professional team members in the development of the app.
With our gratitude.
-Bernard Kirk Co-founder of Africa Code Week
AfriCANCode Challenge
Another development for this year is the AfriCANCode Challenge which is a coding competition aimed at engaging participants through a number of fun and exciting activities. This ACW competition invites youth, aged 9 to 16 either individually or in teams, to use their skills and creativity to solve problems. Two competition themes have been identified: ‘Courageous Coders’, focused on how technology can change the world, and ‘Plugged-in Pupils’, which asks youngsters to imagine the potential related to
Commenting on the AfriCANCode Challenge and the urgent need to prepare youth with digital skills learning, Moez Chakchouk had these words.
“More than 60% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population is under the age of 25, making it the most youthful region in the world. The continent’s working-age population is expected to swell by two-thirds reaching 600 million by 2030. It’s clearly critical to ensure Africa’s youth is fully equipped with 21st century digital skills. Harnessing the power of creativity, technology and innovation can also inspire us to unite and be ready to meet today’s challenges.”
-Moez Chakchouk, Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information at UNESCO
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