Africa Code Week: free coding workshops available in Cape Town

As part of the inaugural Africa Code Week, running from 1 to 10 October, the Cape Town Science Centre will host a variety of free coding workshops, including Scratch coding workshops for children aged between 8 and 12 and Whatsapp “clone” workshops for 18 to 24 year olds.

An joint initiative from SAP, Simplon.co, the Galway Education Centre and the Cape Town Science Centre, Africa Code Week aims to increase the levels of coding literacy across the continent. According to a press release sent to Memeburn, this year the initiative will orchestrate hundreds of coding workshops for 20 000 kids and youth from three different age groups (8-11, 12-17 and 18-24) across 11 countries (South Africa, Angola, Cameroon, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia, Togo and Egypt).

As part of those efforts the Cape Town Science Centre is aiming to training 1 500 children to code during the upcoming October school holidays. “Children will be trained using Scratch, which is a freely available software application that is fast, fun and an easy way to get started in computer science. Specialist volunteers from SAP offices across the globe are helping to make this possible by joining the team at the Centre to train children,” said Julie Cleverdon, Director of the Science Centre in Cape Town.

Read more: 10 exciting ways to learn how to code and why it’s important

In addition to the Cape Town Science Centre’s efforts, other Cape Town organisations have embraced the initiative and are set to create a ‘coding buzz’ by organising a host of coding activities across the city.

“Coding is intellectually stimulating. Whatever the endpoint you are trying to reach, coding takes the destination and builds a journey, step by step,” said Dr Carolina Ödman-Govender, the Chief Scientist at Thumbzup Innovations and the South African Ambassador for Africa Code Week. “And each step is a little achievement on its own, a little problem solved. And for each little problem solved comes that fix of satisfaction which is what makes computer games so addictive. With coding, one is always learning new things, new technologies, new environments and new ways of solving problems.”

Those interested in attending these activities can visit the Africa Code Week website and specifically the ‘live’ Map, which plots the events taking place in Cape Town, and indeed across Africa.