From LUCAS PEDRO in Luanda, Angola
LUANDA – ANGOLAN youths, educators and parents are set to benefit from a continent-wide initiative a global enterprise application software firm has initiated to spread digital literacy across Africa.

Over the next few days, the Southern African country will play host to a series of train-the-trainer (TTT) workshops during the official build-up to SAP Africa Code Week (ACW). ACW is set for December.

Spearheaded by SAP and founded in 2015, ACW is a continent-wide initiative to simplify the face of software coding for Africa’s youth.

In Angola, partners, including; Cod Cod Codet, the Ministry of Education in Angola, the American Embassy, the French Embassy, Vivre En Angola’s website and community, the Lycée Alioune Blondin Leye, the ONG Mulemba, Instituto Superior Técnico de Angola (ISTA), The University of Agostinho Neto have partnered for the TTT workshops.

Of particular interest is the collaboration with the school Dom Bosco, an innovative, adaptive programme working with young disadvantaged children living in urban areas in Luanda.

This week’s 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.

TTT workshops will be conducted in Portuguese and will take place in Luanda, the capital city, until Wednesday at the school Dom Bosco, in de municipe de Sambizanga.

The workshops are open to all school teachers and any other parties interested in becoming part of ACW.

Attendees will receive 90 minutes of software coding training based on MIT’s Scratch system, a USB with course notes in Portuguese with Scratch pre-loaded and a training certificate upon completion.

The objective is for participants to take the skillset back to their communities and host sessions for children during the official ACW event in October 15-23.

Aimed at local school teachers, the TTT workshops will seek to train hundreds of Angola participants.

The objective is to empower as many people as possible in the continent, 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.

– Guardian