Do you want to be more employable? Learn coding skills

Students in African universities and other tertiary institutions on the continent should learn coding skills, even when they are not enrolled as students at departments of computer sciences, as a way of preparing themselves for well-paying jobs in the digital sector and for career change directions.

The call was made by Caissa Veeran, the head of partnerships at HyperionDev, a South African digital provider, while highlighting some of the findings of its report, The 2021 HyperionDev Tech Graduate Futures Report, during a virtual event that was held on 19 November.

Essentially, coding is the use of computer programming languages, such as JavaScript, C++ and Python, whereby coders give computers and machines a set of instructions on what actions to perform. Coding enables the creation of software programmes, operating systems and mobile apps.

According to Veeran, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 70% of jobs now require basic digital skills and about two-thirds of employers have reported experiencing skills gaps in their workforce.

“The issue is that [the] tech industry is expanding and changing rapidly, disrupting traditional job markets and creating new demands and roles for software developers and machine learning engineers – much faster than universities in Africa had been able to react to,” said Veeran.

Some of the highly skilled jobs that are available to software developers, even without degrees in digital science, include web developers, cloud computing engineers, cyber security professionals, e-commerce marketers, database and network professionals, fintech engineers, automation specialists, risk management specialists and digital transformation experts.

A third of software developers are self-taught

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), an affiliate member of the World Bank Group, says universities in Africa train only 33% of software developers, while 31% are self-taught. The combined efforts of online schools and boot camps produce another 26%, while on-the-job training accounts for the remaining 10% of the software developers in the continent.

“In a push to expand technology proficiency among Africa’s youth, after-school programmes and coding classes are driving the growth in software development training,” stated the IFC in a study, ‘e-Conomy Africa 2020’, that was authored in collaboration with Google last year.

In that aspect, Veeran said, there was a need for African universities to re-imagine expanding skills of software engineering, machine learning, robotics and other practical fields of the digital economy, not just by increasing enrolment in digital degree courses but by integrating coding into the rest of the degree and diploma programmes, even as non-examinable academic units.

The issue is that, with coding skills, more graduates could get jobs in cutting-edge industries that are involved in 5G technology, artificial intelligence and robotics, blockchain technologies, quantum and edge computing, the internet of things and augmented and virtual reality technologies.

The IFC and Google estimated that, currently, there are about 700,000 professional software developers across Africa, but more than 50% of them are concentrated in just five countries: namely, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa.

According to Veeran, with the penetration of the internet, more jobs for graduates with coding skills could be created in the traditional industrial sectors where new technologies have been adopted, as in mobile banking, fintech and consumer retail services, manufacturing, education, transport and automotive industries, green technology and agriculture.

With the global move to remote work, HyperionDev researchers think digital technology will eventually become an integral part of most human activity.

Their report pointed out how, during the COVID-19 lockdown, in most countries, digital solutions for work, entertainment and communication became essential overnight.

Universities’ approach faulted

In this regard, the report faulted universities in most African countries in their approach to pre-career education in computer science or in other related information and technology programmes, as most such courses are out of reach for many students.

“Even in countries like South Africa, where university education is more affordable, the average cost of a university degree in computer science lies far out of reach of the majority of people, as it costs between ZAR30,000 (about US$1,860) and ZAR70,000 per year,” stated the report.

Other entry barriers also exist, as most computer science and similar digital degree programmes require high minimum secondary school grades just to register.

In her presentation, Veeran said most universities had been a disappointment to people interested in upskilling for the digital economy but who might not meet those high minimum academic requirements.

But, amid efforts to open opportunities for university graduates without computer or engineering degrees to work in the emerging resilient digital economy in South Africa, Veeran said HyperionDev had been providing coding skills even to people who did not have a lot of financial resources or time to undergo a demanding four-year university degree programme.

As part of the global response to increasing digital skills in communities and in the workplace, HyperionDev has opened coding boot camps. About 50% of the students have only a high school diploma.

Coding boot camps have also provided pathways to many people who may have lost work or who wanted to move into new careers or into new lines of business.

“Our boot camps are accessible to all and help people find paying, rewarding tech careers – and give people higher salaries and better working opportunities,” said Veeran.

According to the report, only 19.6% of their graduates came from information and technology-related fields, while 55% completed their boot camp while working on a full-time job.

Although time-consuming undergraduate and postgraduate digital degree programmes for producing highly skilled computer scientists, artificial intelligence and machine learning engineers will be here to stay, HyperionDev and other stakeholders are urging African universities to participate in expanding pathways for skills development for the digital economy.

Towards this goal, in the next five years, Google aims to train 100,000 coding specialists across Africa through Google Developers Training, a move that will help to bridge the software developer skills gap on mobile technologies and platforms in the continent.

But, being aware that only 21% of women are software developers in Africa, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa had been holding coding boot camps for girls in African countries. The most recent one was held in July this year for 300 girls from Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo.