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Africa Code Week aims to teach 20 000 kids the art of code

The first Africa Code Week will take place from the 1st to the 10th of October and the Cape Town Science Centre will be hosting a number of free coding workshops aimed at pre-teens and young adults.

The Cape Town Science Centre has set a target to train 1 500 children between the ages of eight and 12 to code using Scratch over the ten day period. This will add to the target Africa Code Week has set which aims to reach 20 000 children in 11 African countries.

For those that want to code but are a bit older than 12 years of age, the centre will host a workshop for 18-to -24 year olds where individuals will create a WhatsApp-style instant messaging service.

This event will only be hosted on the 3rd and 4th of October during two, two-and-a-half hour sessions on each day.

“ICT (Information and Communications Technology) is no longer part of our future – it is our present,” MEC for Education in the Western Cape, Debbie Schäfer said. “In education, it is our responsibility to equip our children to be active citizens in our economy, and provide much-needed skills. There is a great need in South Africa for IT professionals. Africa Code Week assists in promoting this as a possible future career for our learners.”

According to Cape Town Science Centre a number of other organisations will be hosting events centred around the art of coding in and around Cape Town. For those interested in the maker movement, The Flower Spider Project will be hosting an event that will teach attendees more about Arduino and robotics.

Both the Scratch and WhatsApp clone workshops hosted by the Cape Town Science Centre are free to attend but booking is essential. Teens and children outside of Cape Town will be given the opportunity to learn code with help from specially created online courses.

You can find more information about the times and locations of the workshops on the Cape Town Science Centre’s website and you can view the live map of all the workshops which will be taking place throughout the continent as a part of Africa Code Week.

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