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Coders4Africa is an independent nonprofit organization that provides training, education and development infrastructure, logistics and intellectual support to IT professionals in Africa. The Coders4Africa Board provides leadership and makes program decisions.The organization’s activities are enhanced by the active participation of its members.
Coders4Africa membership consists of software developers and computer science students funded by the organization, and associates and partners with membership granted by the Coders4Africa principals. The sponsors include Microsoft West, Central Africa (WECA) and the Indian Ocean Islands (IOI), Oracle, Pluralsight – the professional On-Demand! training library designed for developers, by developers, The Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE) and iDEV.
Coders4Africa provides African programmers and developers a gateway to free high quality training and certification in the main technologies and platforms that currently dominate the software development industry. The vision is to create and support a Pan-African community of competent, internationally certified IT professionals focused on developing the IT tools for African Agriculture, Business, Education, Health Care, Government and general Social needs by leveraging on the rapid development and evolution of the wireless communications and Internet access platform in Africa to educate, certify and continue to support a 1000+ cadre of IT professionals.
The specific goals for Coders4Africa are:
- To educate and accredit 1000 Pan-African software developers utilizing mobile, web and database development platforms by 2016. Build capacity by introducing DevHubs across Africa, providing developers an open space to innovate and create solutions that solve problems their community faces.
- To create, via these solutions, economic development and growth across local communities, including the smallest farmers and businesses and utilize the Pan-African community of IT professionals to create free Open Source solutions that respond to local African problems and demand whilst stimulating growth of the African software industry by tapping into local talent and human resources.
- To assure the Pan-African community becomes a catalyst, playing a prominent role in providing technology-based tools in Agriculture, Business, Education, Health Care, Government and general Social needs.
Coders4Africa is looking to contribute practically and effectively to the development of human capital in Africa through the means of technology. Human capital development issues have always existed in Africa and its development is essential in reducing poverty and developing the economy. It is creating a pool of Highly skilled African citizens in the software development industry to enlarge the labor income share thus contributing in a more equitable distribution of income.One of the end goals is to create a community of African programmers that share and transfer knowledge among themselves and to future generation of programmers.
Definitely a wake up call for coders on the continent to join the thousands of developers and programmers already on the platform. Time to code the continent towards success – bit by bit.
