Rwanda Coding Academy gets grant boost to develop world-class programmers

Rwanda Coding Academy will receive one hundred and fifty thousand US Dollars in a new grant agreement between the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Ministry of ICT and Innovation in Rwanda.

The grant fund is sponsored by the Rockefeller Trust Fund and administered by AfDB. It will go into financing on-job training for teachers. As well as equipping the school with the equipment to facilitate an ultra-modern innovation center.

The academy is a special model school set up by the Rwandan government to develop technology talent. That will drive the booming innovation-driven digital economy in Rwanda. The academy trains students in software development, embedded systems programming and Cyber-Security.

“The Rwanda Coding Academy is part of our broader vision to grow a local pool of highly talented Pan-African workforce in science, technology and innovation“, shares Paula Ingabire, Minister for ICT and Innovation.

Nnenna Nwabufo, Acting Director General for the African Development Bank’s Eastern Region notes “this proof-of-concept has profound implications on how the education sector can adopt an effective response to the persistent skills mismatches in the labour market, not only in Rwandan but in Africa at large.”

The coding Academy is a 3-year program opened to high school graduates.
It has an intake of sixty students per year, recruiting 30 sets of boys and girls for each year to encourage gender diversity.

It is currently piloting in Nyabihu District in the Western province of Rwanda with plans to scale the academy in each province. That will onboard about three hundred students each year.