SAVIOUS KWINIKA
JOHANNESBURG – SYSTEMS Applications Products (SAP, the global enterprise application software firm, aims to double the number of youth benefiting from a continent wide initiative to empower the youngsters participate in the digital economy.

Founded in 2015, SAP’s Africa Code Week seeks to empower African youth with coding skills through hands-on and playful learning.

With the support of hundreds of partners across Africa, its inaugural year saw more than 89 000 youth across 17 countries introduced to software coding within a mere ten days – four times the initial goal.

The aim for ACW 2016 is to double that, reaching a minimum of 150 000 youth
throughout 30 African countries.

“However, the sustainability of initiatives such as ACW relies heavily on skilled volunteers,” says Kudzai Danha, Managing Director for SAP West Africa.

“In order to train a new generation of Digital Economy workers in Africa we need to have skilled and knowledgeable instructors in place to provide mentorship, leadership and skills transfer to our ACW participants.”

Danha says it is SAP’s vision to help the world run better, but to improve people’s lives.

“TTT (train-the-trainer) workshops enable the teachers of today to enable the innovators of tomorrow by providing a platform for the transfer of skills and knowledge from ‘Master Instructors’ to parents, teachers and educators, empowering them to become teachers who can train students in their local communities.”

Meanwhile, Nigeria will over the next two weeks play host to a series of official train-the-trainer (TTT) sessions as the country takes on a leading role in the build up to SAP ACW 2016.

Aimed at local school teachers, this week’s TTT workshops in Lagos and Abuja will seek to train in excess of 200 participants.

The objective is to empower as many people as possible to take part in this year’s ACW and to ensure the sustainability of this initiative.

With over 1 500 educators trained in 2015, all of whom have gone on to positively impact the lives of thousands of young people, SAP’s long-term goal is to empower more than 200 000 teachers reaching in excess of five million children and youth over the next ten years.

Lagos State’s Commissioner for Science and Technology, Olufemi Odubiyi, says Africa Code Week is an opportunity for them to deliver leaders for tomorrow’s challenges.

Nigeria needs to show Africa and the rest of the world what Nigeria and, more importantly, what driven and determined African youth, can achieve, says Odubiyi.