The winners of the three best projects of the AfriCAN Code Challenge 2022 (ACC), a coding competition organised as part of the Africa Code Week (ACW), were rewarded, on Wednesday 16 November 2022, during a prize giving ceremony at the Rajiv Gandhi Science Centre (RGSC) in Bell Village. On that occasion, ACW 2022 in Mauritius was launched.
The Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Education, Tertiary Education, Science and Technology, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, the Chairperson of the RGSC, Mrs Ellora Dhunnoo, the Director of RGSC, Dr Aman Maulloo, and other personalities were present during the prize-giving and launching events.
The Africa Code Week is an Africa-wide initiative to engage the youth in Coding. It started in 2015 by SAP Corporate Social Responsibility EMEA with the long-term goal of empowering teachers and positively impacting the lives of several million children and youth within the next 10 years in Africa. In Mauritius, the ACW is organised by the RGSC in collaboration with the Mauritius Institute of Education, the National Computer Board and Ceridian Mauritius Ltd. As for the AfriCAN Code Challenge, it aimed at instilling digital literacy and computational thinking skills amongst students aged between 8 and 16 years.
In her address, the Vice-Prime Minister said that the ACC aligns with the education philosophy of her Ministry to promote creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship for learners at an early age while consolidating Government’s endeavour of digitally transforming the country.
“Technical and technological skills are the new mantra of this modern age and such skills are perquisite as many human jobs are getting replaced by machines and robotics,” she said. She also indicated that as per different publications, 65% of today’s global students will work in STEM jobs and according to OECD reports, 80% of jobs have not yet been created out of which 75% will be IT-related.
Mrs Dookun-Luchoomun emphasised the need to invest in technological education to prepare learners to be future-focused and future-ready. She called for a change in mindset over the traditional and orthodox ones and to inculcate the youth with the right mindset so as to be innovative, creative and solution providers.
She dwelt on the benefits of Coding while highlighting that Israel is teaching Coding at kindergarten and countries such as Singapore and Australia have made it a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools. Coding, she underpinned, is a new type of literacy at the heart of the future jobs that will thrive on the 21st century skills including digital literacy communication, critical thinking, productivity, collaboration, and problem solving.
The Vice-Prime Minister recalled that the ACC was launched in 2020 and the three best projects were submitted to the pan-African competition. In 2020, one of the three projects ranked 4th at the African level and 1st in 2021, she indicated.
The Vice-Prime Minister congratulated the participants for being creative and innovative as well as their parents, educators, mentors for their constant support and guide.
For her part, Mrs Dhunnoo, stressed the need for the youth to be equipped with the know-how to face the challenges of a digital-oriented world. She encouraged the youth to embark on the digital journey and to embrace careers in that sector.