Computer: Teaching Nigerian Children How To Code

We know Nigeria is falling behind the rest of the world in math and science, and we don’t know if this will be bad for our future. Yet millions of Naira is spent on fixing numerous issues in the country yet ignoring the fast growing sector of innovation and job growth which is computer science.

In over 20 states of the federation, computer science doesn’t even count towards high school graduation requirements. Although programming jobs are growing rapidly, yet it is also rapidly plummeting in our education sector. This is a skill that can be taught as early as pry 1 in primary schools, yet it’s not even offered in these schools. Obviously we are not preparing our students for the myriad of problems that lie ahead.

A quote from President Obama, he said “To grow our middle class, our citizens must have access to the education and training that today’s jobs require”.

The first step in solving a problem is to recognize its need to be solved. Today only 3% of students study programming in Nigeria. If we triple that to 9%, we close the gap between students and jobs. 

This is a giant opportunity, impacting every industry (67% of these jobs are outside the tech sector). We need to all come out and say in a united voice that more students need to learn how to code (program). Our leaders need to endorse the idea because it can only be beneficial to our economy in the future.

Anyone Can Code

Most adults cant rap their heads around this because most of us never learned this stuff either, maybe we think it is only for geniuses or nerds, sitting in a dark basement coding all night. Most people don’t know that 10 year old girls are learning to code in some few primary schools in Nigeria and beyond, whereas accountants, doctors, engineers don’t know that when you enter formulae into spreadsheets, they have written a computer program.
 
A studious student who knows basic algebra needs only a few weeks to learn how to build a Smartphone app or even a game. But majority of us have absolutely no idea on how to do it ourselves nor how to expose our kids to it.
To solve this censorious problem, we must imbibe the culture of coding into our children in primary and secondary schools. 

We can often set up seminars and workshops for our children to ultimately open their minds to the wonders and marvels of computer programming. This can go a long way to helping our children grow technologically and ensure that our economy is revitalized. Until my next writing, Thanks.

An article written by Uchegbu Uchenna, a final year student of Computer Science in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

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