Technology: CodeLagos Expands To Out-of-School Residents

Lagos State government has expanded the CodeLagos initiative to out-of-school centres with classes expected to commence on Monday, November 13, 2017.

The initiative is expected to position Lagos as the technology frontier in Africa by training one million Lagos residents to code.

Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Obafela Bank-Olemoh, in a statement on Sunday, said classes will commence in four centres: Herbert Macaulay Library, Yaba; Ilupeju Public Library, Ilupeju; Isolo Public Library, Isolo and Onikan Youth Centre, Lagos Island. Four classes will hold daily from 8:30am to 4pm in these centres.

Bank-Olemoh said the state governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, gave the Ministry of Education a clear mandate to prepare Lagosians for the economy of the future which is going to be technology driven, adding that CodeLagos was initiated as a response to achieving same.

According to him, the CodeLagos Out-of-School program will provide access to coding education for interested Lagosians aged 16 years and above, who are currently not in any primary or secondary school in Lagos.

Explaining the Out-of-School program further, Bank-Olemoh said the classes will run for six weeks, Monday to Friday, one hour – 30 minutes per class. The classes will cover Web Development, and Fundamentals of Java and Python.

The CodeLagos project initially kicked off with its pilot phase in July this year rolling out in primary and secondary schools in the state, including government and private schools. Currently, the programme has been expanded and is running in about 150 schools in the state.

By January 2018, the programme would have expanded to a minimum of 500 schools across the state, while the Out-of-School program will expand to all the public libraries and selected community centres in the state.

The CodeLagos programme is totally free for participants.