2019 Africa Code Week: Kogi teachers benefits from training

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Kogi teachers training on Coding. Photo via NAN

Some of the trainers from ” Coder in Africa” initiative. Kogi teachers undergo training in Coding. Photo via NAN

No fewer than 700 teachers in Kogi are undergoing training on “Coding’ in Information Communication Technology (ICT) to mark the 2019 Africa Code Week.

Mrs. Rosemary Osikoya, Commissioner for Education, Science, and Technology, disclosed on Thursday this at two-day ICT training for teachers at Nigeria Korean Friendship Institute (NKFI) in Lokoja, tagged: ”Africa Code Week.”

Mr. Eric Aina, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary inaugurated the training on behalf of the commissioner.

The commissioner said the training was supported by SAP, UNICEF, Google, Coderina and other major stakeholders in collaboration with the Kogi State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

According to her, the two-day programme is to expose teachers to new information and communication technology with the main objective to build up their capacity to enable them their official responsibilities.

This, she said,  would also help the teachers in the course of teaching and learning of computer science in various basic and secondary educational institutions across the State.

”The training is currently going on in four centres across Kogi: Lokoja centre at NKFI, Okene centre at Abdulaziz Attah Memorial College Okene, Kabba centre at St. Augustine College and Anyigba centre at Kogi State University.

”The programme is open to all our computer science teachers and it is so much enlarged that it has provision for 700 teachers across Kogi. So, the opportunity is there for all our computer science teachers to take part in the programme,” Osikoya said.

One of the Master Trainers, Mr. Akinniyi Obaide, who is also a Director, Coderina (coder in Africa), said the Africa Code Week’ started four years ago by “the big giants in ICT industry“, to educate Africans in the area of coding technology.

Obaide, who doubles as the Representative of SAP, the ICT said: “The big giants believe that it will be better off if we can start with the children. So, we conceived the idea where at a certain time of the year; from Oct. 14 to 25, experts go out to train children and teach them on coding.

”We are using coding programme to teach them all over Africa. As we speak, the same thing is going on in over 30 countries across Africa. It is primarily meant to educate our children to develop interest and have a heart for technology. The idea is that, through this ICT programme, many families would be lifted out of poverty.

“This is just to teach the children to have the heart for solving problems” he explained.

Mr. Usman Sadiq, a Software Engineer in the ministry, said the essence of the training was to train the teachers to enable them to train the children.

He said the programme was majorly designed for children.

One of the trainees, Mr. Taiwo Igunnugbemi, from Scintillate International Model School, Lokoja said the training was a landmark in learning for him because it was very interesting, adding that he learned new things.

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