Last week RLabs hosted more than 30 young kids as part of the Africa Code Initiative in partnership with Google. According to the Africa Code Initiative, coding is the literacy of the digital age and children should be able to speak fluently and express themselves in the 21st century. The growing increase of youth that will enter the African labor market each year and the challenge of unemployment is one of the reasons why digital jobs becomes a strong value proposition to young people.
The kids who attended the Africa Code Week workshop at RLabs were introduced to basic programming concepts and even managed to build their first application. The workshop highlighted the opportunities to teach our children how to solve problems through the use of writing code. The children learned the following useful lessons throughout the day:
- They learned how to deconstruct a problem
- They were able to work in teams
- They could immediately see the outcome of what they’ve built
- Children were given the opportunity to showcase their creativity
- They were able to learn how to systematically develop a solution for a problem
