3,000 African girls to be trained in coding

Eno Ekanem, 15, was one of more than 80 participants in the first Coding Camp in Addis Ababa, in 2018. Pic Courtesy/ UN Women/Faith Bwibo

The UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has announced that about 3,000 young female Africans between 12 and 25 years will be trained to "develop coding and other cognitive skills for solving the continent's contemporary problems, closing gender gaps and fighting poverty".

In a statement on Friday, the UNECA said it has organised the initiative dubbed "the Connected African Girls Coding Camp", in partnership with the Cameroon government, UNWOMEN, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and UNESCO.

The girls will attend the camping in person in Cameroon's Yaounde with a decentralised connection to the country's "Silicon Mountain" in Buea, and also via a virtual platform from June 28 to July 9.

The camp is meant to promote African women's access to ICTs, provide young females with the right foundation to find long-term success in employment, entrepreneurship or further education; and build meaningful partnerships, the UNECA statement said.

Training modules for the camp will include technical domains such as animation; coding for fashion through the Turtle Stich embroidery; gaming and web development; robotics/Internet of Things (IoT); and 3D printing.

It will also comprise design thinking, computational thinking, the role of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM). The camp will culminate in an Innovation Fair and Project Exhibition activity in which various groups will showcase concrete projects developed.

22.5
Percentage of women in Africa have web access as opposed to 33.8 per cent of men

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