Within the framework of the Africa Code Week (ACW), social enterprise Jokkolabs wishes to support local organizations to implement coding workshops and empower more young Africans with digital literacy skills.
Supported by UNESCO and SAP, Jokkolabs launched a call for proposals to assign micro-grants to registered non-profit organizations in the continent. Proposals must describe and detail specific Africa Code Week training projects and include a spending forecast for the grant and strive to achieve gender balance in participants. Jokkolabs in cooperation with SAP and Africa Code Week partners will select and assign the micro-grants to local implementation partners.
Selected recipient organizations will then be able to deliver hands-on coding workshops for children (aged 8 -16) and/or Train-the-Trainer sessions for teachers and trainers in their local communities during Africa Code Week 2021. The application deadline is 12th November 2021 and the grant which is approximately 500 USD to 1000 USD (depending on reach and impact) will be delivered to successful applicants by the end of November.
Proposals’ budget shall not exceed 30% for hardware. No provision for software acquisition will be accepted. Workshops must take place during Africa Code Week and before the end of the year, as reporting will be due by the 31st December 2021.
Organizations are welcomed to submit their proposals for the Africa Code Week workshops on the ACW website to apply for the grant. More information and the link to the application are available at
The 2021 Africa Code Week, Africa’s biggest digital skills initiative officially launched on 5th October with a strong focus on virtual learning as the world struggles to recover after the COVID-19 disruption. The launch coincided with World Teacher’s Day, which focused this year on “teachers at the heart of education recovery”.
During the event, in light of COVID and the need for virtual learning, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, Dr. Tawfik Jelassi, emphasized the importance of digital skills for Africa’s youth. “Understanding information technology, computational thinking, and problem-solving are all fundamental information literacy skills. Everyone should have access to information and be able to obtain the necessary competencies to turn information into knowledge and knowledge into practical value which enhances their lives and well-being,” he said.
Since its inception in 2015, Africa Code Week has empowered more than nine million youth and provides free opportunities for students and teachers to learn much-needed technology skills. Despite the restrictions imposed by COVID, last year’s initiative successfully reached 1.5 million youth, of which nearly half (48%) were girls. Over 10,500 workshops were held across 43 countries and 21,000 teachers participated in Train-the-Trainer sessions.
The driving force behind Africa Code Week (ACW) is to empower young people and help them to become digitally. “This could only be possible through the collaborative relationships between the public, private and non-profit sectors that are at the heart of ACW,” Michelle Winthrop, Policy Unit Director at Irish Aid, during the launch event.
Spearheaded by SAP in 2015 as part of its social investments to drive sustainable growth in Africa, Africa Code Week is a digital skills development initiative heavily built around strong partnerships with the public, private and non-profit sectors as the driving force behind the initiative’s ability to build teaching capacity across the continent in support of UN Sustainable Development Goals.
UNESCO is since 2016 one of the main partners of the programme through its YouthMobile initiative which deploys projects worldwide to promote training in digital technology to enable young women and men with the 21st century skills they need to solve local challenges and participate in shaping today’s and tomorrow’s digital world.
Inspired by the free software and open source culture, Jokkolabs is one of the first coworking spaces in West Africa. Jokkolabs' activities are articulated between virtual online exchange and physical co-working space. The non-profit organization is established in several West-Africa countries.