Why Teens in Africa should Code

We all know the importance of tech in our everyday life and various industries ranging from Entertainment, Sport, Transportation, Information, and lots more. We all go around with one piece of tech daily; be it your phone, car, wristwatch, or even just a pen. Trust me, there are lots of crazy electronic pen out there.
Before I continue, I will like to introduce myself since this is my first post my name is Jeremiah Olisa and I am a Backend Web Developer, I have been coding since I was 13 years old. The rest is in my BIO.
As developers or tech enthusiasts, I would like us to go back in time, a little, to when you wrote that first ‘Hello world!’ program or your first program. Now think about the joy and pride you felt at that moment you thought you could control a computer to an extent🔥. Come back to the present, now imagine if you had started coding at a very young age Think of how much accomplishments you could have made. What a pity even for myself, I wish I had started when I was 8 or 10.
I know there are many organizations out there sponsoring code clubs, I think that is cool but we need to push the boundary we need to spread this gospel of code like a wildfire. I have talked to other kids and teens about coding. Last year in my school’s Thanksgiving ceremony and for the past two years in my church, I spoke about coding but that has not been enough. What I discovered is that this is not a one-man job or for just a few developers. It is a job for every developer and tech enthusiast. Why?
There are numerous reasons why I say so, again let us go back in time to the first few years of programming – how stressful it was and because there were very few developers available. Coding back then was like farming with a knife and a spoon. Think about life without your favourite text editor or IDE. I would not want to be a programmer in those type of environments but introducing kids into programming is a way of generating a new type of obsession. Kids and teens are obsessed with lots of things like cartoons, toys, movie characters, sports and so on, research has shown that when kids are attached to objects they do not let go easily.
Obsession in kids is a Healthy Phase of Life – from parents.com
Common Obsession in Kids are magical obsessions – from childmind.org
That is just what we need – magical obsessions, magical thinking and thinking about the impossible just to develop the life of an average developer or human. Tanmay Bakshi is one of the youngest IBM Watson Champion, TEDx speaker and has written numerous books on IBM Watson. He is a self-taught developer. Call that a five-star obsession for someone who earned $1.25 million at the age of 14. In 2016/17 he started talking about cognitive and cloud computing and augmentation of human life for people with disabilities. Look at the age Bill Gate started, Muhammad Hamza Shahzad (9 years), Daphne Koller, Mark Zuckerberg, Isabel Sieh (14-year-old, Founder of Girls can code), Jack Dorsey, and many young programmers out there.
Open Source, Programming Resources and Materials: Teens love to show off! Imagine me creating an algorithm that can predict the scores of a football match or automate betting for users I will want to share the project and show off my skills making that project an open-source for people to see and use. Tanmay Bakshi is also a keen lover of open source and other programming materials. Guess what? He is a teen developer.
Another reason is the skills they learn - creativity, problem solving, teamwork, leadership and compliance skills, presentation skills, learning to learn, empathy, resilience, authentic learning, like-minded friends, confidence-boosting hobby and so on.
An extra reason teens need to learn how to code is to reduce the rate of crimes and cybercrime. A few days ago, a girl of about 8-10 years was talking to her elder brother (who is in his late teenage years). He said, ‘Everybody is just buying iPhone. It’s like I will also start doing yahoo (cybercrime) ‘. We all know that the alarming issue of yahoo boys and cybercrime, especially in Nigeria has been a torment to everybody and is tarnishing the image of the country. When kids learn to code, they have a potential means of earning income and activity to channel their energy.
Personally, I think teaching kids to code will yield to the increase in production and service delivery in Nigeria. A few weeks ago, I created an e-learning web app J-school that allows schools to use the app as a virtual school environment during this pandemic lockdown. It has features like a Computer-based test (CBT) section, Q and A section between students and teachers; online class section with a material (drawing, illustration, classwork, etc.) which will be uploaded by the teacher alongside lesson notes, a graphical representation of users’ scores and progress, and lots more. I am just one teenager. Imagine a bunch of teenagers like me with this superpower in Nigeria?
Finally, there are lots of reason why kids should learn how to code at a young age, but these are my strongest points. Before I leave, imagine your kid becoming the next Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or even Tanmay Bakshi. Imagine an environment filled with creative coding machines like myself.
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