Mozambique hosts SAP Africa Code Week

ACWis taking place in Maputo with the initiative’s objective is to spread digital literacy across the continent and start shaping tomorrow’s skilled workforce through hands-on and playful learning.

The TTT workshops will provide a platform for the transfer of skills and knowledge from ‘Master Instructors’ to local parents, teachers and educators, enabling them to become the next expert coding teachers who can train potential students in their communities.

Aimed at local school teachers, the TTT workshops will seek to train hundreds of Mozambique participants with a special focus on female training. The objective is to empower as many people as possible, with the long-term goal to empower more than 200,000 teachers reaching in excess of five million children and youth over the next ten years.

“This year’s train-the-trainer workshop has a target of training 600 trainers and we are pulling-out all the stops to ensure that our future teachers are trained by the very best – this will be done by flying four master trainers from Portugal to attend and facilitate the workshops. Critical to the success of Africa Code Week, the model relies heavily on the participation of volunteer trainers,” commented José Luís Carvalho, consulting Director, EMEA SAP Digital Business Services.

ACW helps contribute towards shaping a relevant future workforce by sparking interest in software coding with participants receiving not only basic skills but also invaluable hands-on experience. The initiative provides learners from the ages of 8 – 17 with coding basics and the opportunity to program their own animations, quizzes and games. Older learners, aged 18-24, are provided an introduction to web technologies such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and SQL in order to provide them with a basic understanding of website architecture, teaching them how to develop a fully operational and mobile-friendly website.

“In order to provide a new generation of Digital Economy workers in Mozambique with the basics of the prerequisite skills for the competitive job market under the auspices of Africa Code Week, we need knowledgeable instructors in place to provide mentorship and skills transfer to participating youngsters,” added Carvalho

According to Luize Guimaraes, MUVA Program Manager, “Africa Code Week is an opportunity for us to showcase that Mozambique supports growth through technology. The mission of Muva is to economically empower women in urban areas and MuvaTech will take the lead to include more women in the ACW teacher training with the aim to increase the access of women and girls to technology and to create greater interest and knowledge about opportunities in the ICT industry. Muva Tech will support the process to educate disadvantaged girls and women on the ICT skills they need to find employment in this industry.”