Codebus Africa aimed at empowering teenage girls – Finland envoy

Finland Ambassador to Nigeria, Pirjo Suomela-Chowdhury has said that the CodeBus Africa, a creative adventure on coding is geared toward empowerment of young school girls especially the teenagers in ten countries across Africa including Nigeria. Suomela-Chowdhury told Daily Times during the training in Abuja that the centenary celebration of Finland is very important to the people of the country, hence the need to impact the lives of teenagers in Africa.
The first phase of the training commenced on Wednesday at the Ventures Platform, Aso Drive, with 42 students from Government Girls Secondary School Dutse trained on coding using music.

According to the Finnish diplomat, the Codebus Africa is part of the lineup activities; it will take place in 10 countries in Africa, in hundred days to mark the 100th Year anniversary of the republic of Finland.
The Ambassador said, “I am delighted that we are able to bring this project to Nigeria as part of our anniversary celebrations. I find it particularly important to reach out to the young, focusing on education and employment – critical factors in successfully building the future of any country.”

“We, the Ambassadors of Finland in Sub-Saharan Africa came together about a year ago and thought what is it that we could do together to impact the lives of young people in the region. So we came up with the Codebus Africa, the first of its kind and it will take place in 10 African countries. It started last week in Ghana, this week in Nigeria and it will finish in May in South Africa.

The idea is 100 days, 10 countries and the basic concept in every country is the same – Creative Coding Workshop. The students are teenagers from local schools and they are taught how to make music with coding. We are involving school girls because we have special attention on women and girls in our information technology program and encouraging girls to take their rightful place in the ICT world. We want to celebrate those things that are important for us like education, equality among other things. It’s about history and celebration but it is also about the present and the future.”

Some of the students, Jennifer Obokhai and Etuk Ime-Etim who spoke with our reporter, expressed gratitude to the Finland government for affording them the opportunity to acquire the coding skills. “It is fund, interesting and wonderful. I learned how to create music using program melodies, notes and codes,” excited Obokhai said.
On her part, Ime- Etuk said, “this coding technology will help me in future especially in my career because I want to be a petroleum engineer.” One of the trainers, Irena Bakic, Project Lead from Aalto said that the aim of the creative coding was to have a big number of people with interest in technology and using music coding gives you positive feedback. It’s more than web development.”

Bakic also explained that the choice of adolescent was to enable them to take early decision in studying is the decision making age unlike university students who have already made a decision on their career. Meshack Obioha, Programs Partnership and Social Impact Manager, Ventures Platform, said that after training the students they make to understand the endless opportunities in Information Communications Technology (ICT). He said for those who may want to go into technology business, Venture Platforms will fund their business in accelerated program in four months in hyper focus and hyper growth.
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