From South Africa to Ghana and Tanzania, computer science unlocks the future for youth
Every afternoon after class in Diepsloot township in Gauteng, South Africa, a group of girls excitedly gathers in a shipping container crammed with computers, atop the small hill where the school stands. They are learning to code.
Maggie Monteno, 22, used to be one of those girls. The pandemic and financial difficulties forced her to drop out of her computer science major, but she found a job as an assistant teacher and is now teaching other girls to code. Her goal is to help the girls launch their own digitally empowered careers and become entrepreneurs.
Maggie and thousands of girls are part of Code for Change, a nonprofit based in Sandton, South Africa. The organization is trying to spark a wave of change in South Africa and neighboring countries by providing tech education to high school students.
Jonathan Novotny, co-founder of Code for Change, wants to promote tech literacy and growth opportunities for youth in Africa. His strategy is result-oriented, focused on helping kids become the workforce of the future. “Everything we do is about practical skills that teenagers can implement as soon as possible in the real world,” he says.
Jonathan and his team, which includes Rachael Pahwaringira, head of Code for Change’s legal division, face their share of hurdles, such as spotty connectivity, scarce equipment, and education exclusion.
Then there’s the city vs. countryside divide.
“Just about five cities have better technology than other parts of the country,” Rachael says. Among those cities are Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban. “Some of the provinces… don’t get the infrastructure as quickly as a donor or the government would give it to a school or an organization that is based in Johannesburg or Cape Town,” she says.
Jonathan agrees. “Everything is easier in the city, I’m not going to lie,” he says. “The Internet is faster, there are more computers, it’s easier to monitor. But we have had incredibly good results in rural areas. It’s just harder to get scale, because things are more distributed, harder to monitor, but… our programs outside of the cities have been just as good.”
Code for Change has been working with local organizations to help introduce coding in their schools. “We are training their trainers and just supporting them,” Rachael says.
Mobile phones have been key to this success. Although kids may have access to computers at school, they often do not have them at home, Jonathan explains. That is why so much of their platform is focused on mobile connectivity. Smartphone ownership is “expanding super rapidly” among young people in South Africa and elsewhere in the region, he says.
Jonathan has a clear vision: He wants to enable young people in Africa to build their careers and, in doing so, improve life in their communities.
Increasing participation of girls in CS
Code for Change is particularly proud of the high rate of involvement of girls in computer science programs. “That’s the beauty of CodeJIKA,” Rachael says. “Over the last three years we have seen an increase in the uptake of girls, and just three weeks ago we were at 48 percent female participation at CodeJIKA, which is very impressive.”
CodeJIKA is an ecosystem of student-run coding clubs in secondary schools, where they learn how to code, starting with “1-Hour Website.”
In one school, girls dominate the coding club, which includes only three boys, Rachael says. “The girls are winning competitions; when we have projects like building a website for a local small business, the boys are the ones going out to do research and the girls are the ones doing the coding.” She adds, with a smile, “We are very proud of our girls.” One former student is now a coding trainer in a local community school, where she’ll be teaching coding to her former classmates.”
Tanzania’s Hub
“Tanzania is a country that is primarily populated by young people right now,” says Nancy Sumari, executive director of Jenga Hub, a partner of Code.org in Tanzania. “Engaging them with technology might propel our development of future human resources and workforce with the right, necessary skills.”
Nancy was crowned Miss Tanzania in 2005, the same year she won the title Continental Queen of Africa, then she stepped off the runway and into the world of business and advocacy for women’s empowerment and quality education. She became a role model for girls across the continent. In addition to founding Jenga Hub, she is the managing director of Bongo5 Media Group and the author of two children’s books.
The Hub’s stated mission is to “reimagine education through a process of creating memorable learning experiences using technology and then improve learning outcomes.” To do that, Nancy says, “we use technology to make learning more engaging.”
“We are building a community of children and young people leveraging technology to create value,” Nancy says. “So how do we do that? We give structured courses, but we also allow for our makers and our young people to disrupt, to invent, to create and to contribute to content on the internet instead of just consuming it.”
In Nancy’s view, gender has become less an issue within the tech hub and club settings. “Maybe you would find teachers deliberately selecting more boys than girls, or maybe the boys would be a little more confident to want to access the clubs, but I think the fact that I myself as a founder am a woman, and that we also have female teachers, has helped in engaging more girls,” she says.
Ghana is in the game
Ghana has a Code Club after-school program based in Accra, the capital, which teaches children computer programming skills. Children between the ages of 5 and 17 can join any of the computer science programs at schools, community centers, and libraries to learn to create computer games, animation, interactive arts, websites, and mobile apps.
For example, Mustapha Diyaol Haqq, 17, developed an artificial intelligence application in his native Ghana that helps small farmers detect early crop infestations.
Mustapha was mentored by Ghana Code Club. “Our mission is to ensure that no child is left behind, and we partner with organizations that support us to train teachers,” says Ernestina Appiah, founder and CEO of Ghana Code Club. “So far, we have provided training for about 1,200 teachers who are using the curriculum we create for them.”
Ernestina decided to found the club when she was looking for resources to teach her son how to code, only to learn that it wasn’t being taught in schools in Ghana. Hers was a long journey, from working as a secretary to opening her own IT firm. In 2015, the BBC named her one of the hundred most inspirational women in the world.
Ghana Code Club has also partnered with the government to include coding in school curricula. “That is giving us more opportunity, and we have been able to reach 55,000 kids all over Ghana,” Ernestina says.
Empowering these nations’ future generations
Despite differences in history and development, South Africa, Tanzania, and Ghana have comparable demographics, with young people making up the majority of their populations. In a region where education disparities and exclusion are among the highest in the world, CodeJIKA, Jenga Hub, and Ghana Code Club are focused on leveling the playing field for all kids and preparing them for the jobs of the future.
All three nonprofits share a sense of urgency.
“We want to see more opportunities for teens, because teens leave school, cannot find a job, do not know how to leverage technology and do not know how to build a business other than a small, kind-of a grocery shop or a hair salon,” Jonathan, of Code for Change, says. “We want kids to be thinking about digital entrepreneurship in Africa and how to leverage technology for the benefit of small businesses in their communities.”
In Ghana, at least 50 farmers are already using Ghana Code Club alumni Mustapha’s app to monitor their crops for pests and to take sustainable actions that not only ensure the protection of food but protect the environment from harmful chemicals resulting from incorrect pesticide use.
In the same spirit, Jenga Hub’s Nancy says, “We are training a generation of children and young people in Tanzania with the skills they will need when they enter the labor market, preparing them for the future of work.”
The hope is that young people who are given the right tools will become part of a new digital generation that can help unlock opportunities for South Africa, Tanzania, Ghana, and the African continent at large.
— Caroline Herman, Code.org
