Updated: February 27, 2024
Not less than 50 percent of today’s jobs require technical skills, and different countries of the world are giving priority to technical education especially coding education.
Africa is not lagging behind as some of countries in that continent have adopted coding as a subject in their primary and secondary education curricular. Out of 7 countries in the world that have made coding a compulsory subject in primary and secondary educations, 2 are African countries.
African Countries that Have Approved Coding as a Subject in Primary and Secondary Education Curricula
South Africa
South Africa was the first African country to implement Coding for children in school curriculum.
South Africa approved coding education for school pupils in 2020 by first training the teachers on how to code and how to teach coding so they can be able to teach the kids. 1,000 schools were targeted during the pilot scheme.
Some institutions such as Code College, CodeX, and CodeSpace among others that offer coding and programming courses where engaged by the South African Government.
In South Africa, Software engineering is said to be the most in-demand skilled job. The government therefore has to pay more attention on technical education especially computer software to equip the young ones for the future jobs, thereby setting the pace for other African countries to follow.
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Kenya
Two years after South Africa introduced coding in its primary and secondary education curriculum, Kenya in August 2022 announced the inclusion of coding as a subject in its education curriculum, making the country second African country to implement coding education in its primary and secondary levels.
The syllabus which was developed by Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development in partnership with Kodia Africa, and approved by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, will offer children in Kenya opportunity to learn coding and computer programming in public schools after the government officially unveiled coding teaching content.
The curriculum will be implemented across primary and secondary schools in Kenya under the Kenyan national digital master plan 2022-2032. It will be supervised by the ministry of education and ICT authority, through the Digital Literacy Program (DLP).
Also approved by the government is the National Digital Master Plan, which targets to establish over 20,000 village digital hubs across the country that will enable the government to employ an additional 40,000 youth directly to run the centers and train interested citizens.