from Hacker News

Teach Programming in Africa

by erkken on 6/29/19, 1:30 PM with 3 comments

Hi,

I'm an engineer in Mechatronics and have been working as a Software Engineer for about 5 years. Lately I have got the desire to go out and teach others and do it in countries where I could make a difference, and I am looking for Africa especially.

Do anyone of you have experience from that? Did you go through any organization, government funded projects, schools or similar?

Would like to hear your experiences!

  • by habitualcritic on 6/30/19, 1:32 PM

    I had a phenomenal experience building a raspberry pi lab in a secondary school in the soweto-kayole slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. We spent 6 weeks training academic facilitators to maintain equipment and enrolling students in programming courses through Khan Academy, Code Academy, and other online platforms. The hardest part was teaching young adults that have never consistently used a computer how to use a keyboard and mouse. Also, how to navigate a desktop environment. It's been successful and we have seen a few programmers come out of the school with marketable skill. Students usually leave to search for a hustle to get food and clean water.

    Kenyan culture and programming appeared to be oil and water for a lot of students and some teachers. They are incredibly relational and always run into to friends and family on the way to important meetings. Sometimes forgetting to show up completely because they were hanging out. We called it "Kenya Time". All the clocks ran on Kenyan Time. I had teachers get upset at me because they showed up 4 hours late to a meeting and I wasn't there.

    The teachers and students that got the importance of deadlines, methodical approaches, and being on-time excelled and usually came out of the slum with a decent little programming gig.

  • by jkuria on 6/29/19, 2:26 PM

    Get in touch: jkuria gmail. I can connect you with people who are already involved in this.

  • by africa-toto on 6/29/19, 2:18 PM

    Good luck! Will be following this thread