30 Jul 2018

Ngwana Enterprises and SAP have joined forces with the Ministry of Basic Education to train trainers in a bid to empower children and youth with digital skills needed for them to thrive in the 21^st century. 

Speaking during a workshop at Kgale Hill Junior Secondary School recently to launch the Africa Code Week, director of education in South East Region, Mr Labane Mokgosi said ICT was paramount in teaching and learning as it helped today’s learner to be innovative, collaborative and creative. 

Mr Mokgosi said coding was a new concept which when utilised could help schools yield better and great results.

“Best countries that do well started a long time ago by integrating ICT into their curriculum. As Botswana we have to be open to it in order to compete in the global world,” he stated. 

He commended Ngwana Enterprises for their initiative to train teachers and the youth so that they could teach the 21^st learner coding using software called Scratch. 

For his part, Kgale Hill Junior Secondary School head, Mr Solomon Setswe said human knowledge remained a pivotal resource in today’s world hence the need to institutionalise coding so that students and teachers were both empowered. 

“I believe we ought to make a deliberate effort to make a paradigm shift in our education system to make ICT a dominant tool. Countries like Japan and China are making a significant stride in ICT. Why can’t we then as Botswana follow suit,” he said. 

Giving an overview of the Africa Code Week, Ngwana Enterprises CEO Mr Mooketsi Tekere said the initiative presented an opportunity to fix unemployment in the continent as it allowed one to develop websites, blogs as well as help companies automate.

He urged government to partner and support the initiative they were rolling out to schools saying coding was the one thing that would help build a global village. 

He urged parents to ensure their children learnt to code at a young age as it would sharpen and empower them for the future.

“For every parent at home, if your kids are not learning to code now, they are going to sit down at home with no jobs in the near future,” he said. 

He further said coding was for all subjects at school, not just Computer Science -based ones as one could code in Setswana. 

He further said they were working on developing an all Setswana coding book that would be used and rolled out to all schools with coding clubs. ENDS