The Cape Town Science Centre, global co-ordinator for Africa Code Week 2016, has announced the first recipient of the Africa Code Week Youth Ambassadors Award – 13-year-old Esihle Yokwana will be presented with her award and prize (a new laptop with Internet access) at Bloubergrant High School today.
The award recognises young girls for their enthusiasm in embracing coding as a critical skill set, encouraging them to hone their skills in computer programming and empowering more girls to follow the same path.
Initiated and led by SAP in 2015, Africa Code Week is a continent wide initiative to simplify the face of coding for the young generation and empower them with the coding tools and skills they need to thrive in the 21st century workforce. With over 88 000 children and youth from 17 African countries introduced to coding in 10 days only, the inaugural Africa Code Week held from 1 to 10 October, far exceeded the target of training 20 000 initially set by SAP and partners. South Africa ranked third in total engagement with over 17 000 young people trained across all provinces.
“Awards like these are not only motivating but invariably life changing” says Sunil Geness, director of government relations and CSR at SAP Africa. “At SAP, we believe that digital literacy has the power to put millions of young Africans on the path to successful careers: this award is a key component of the Africa Code Week initiative to not only identify and nurture young talent in ICT but also to promote digital literacy in the long run.
“We witnessed this with the robotics programmes we supported in the past, where award winners started organising tournaments for other young kids to participate in, encouraging them to become the tech-savvy graduates that will improve Africa’s position in the globally competitive knowledge economy,” he adds.
