Africa Teen Geeks Seeks To Make Coding Accessible To African Children. Africa Teen Geeks is a non-profit organisation that teaches African children aged 6-18 how to code by training teachers to equip them to introduce computer science at schools. Africa Teen Geeks exists to eliminate the barriers faced by disadvantaged communities in pursuing science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The organisation aims to inspire Africa’s next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.
Africa Teen Geeks was founded in 2014 by Lindiwe Matlali, who serves as the organisation’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO). She is currently studying towards MS in Technology Management from Columbia University in New York as well as a Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Stanford University. Her numerous accolades include: Young Business awards top 3 finalist, Mail & Guardian Top young South Africans 2014, TechWomen Fellow 2017, MTN Women in ICT Community Builder Recognition Award 2018 and Fairlady/Santam Social Entrepreneur 2018. Matlali is also an accomplished speaker as she gave a Tedx talk at TEDxBeaconStreet in Boston Massachusetts and at the 20th MIT Venture Capital and Innovation Conference in 2018.
Matlali is considered as the driving force behind the additions of coding & robotics to South Africa’s basic education curriculum. This is because Africa Teen Geeks created the first African block based coding platform, MsZora-Block and created tutorials for both learners and teachers with an objective of ensuring that every African school can teach coding from foundation phase in their mother tongue.
In support of President Cyril Ramaphosa, in ensuring that the principles of social distancing and the lockdown are adhered to in order to avert the negative public health effects of the COVID 19 pandemic. MsZora an artificial-intelligence based educational platform is offering remote classes to enable learning and teaching even in the National Lockdown alert.
Thousands of people have been impacted by the organisation’s work as it has over 500 000 stakeholders reached through Zoom live lessons, over 470 000 views on its YouTube channel, has completed the coding and robotics curriculum in partnership with the Department of Basic Education and has created 6000 video lessons for Grades R to 12. The company has also managed to partner with top brands such as Standard Bank, Amazon, Facebook and Sasol to assist in bringing its vision to life.
