International coding school Le Wagon officially opened its local campus in Cape Town this week, making the Mother City its next home on the African continent.
This, according to Le Wagon, follows the opening of similar campuses in Mauritius and Casablanca last year.
For the Le Wagon Cape Town campus, the coding school partnered with Council on Higher Education-accredited private higher education institution the Red & Yellow Creative School of Business. As a result, the local campus is located at Red & Yellow’s headquarters in Woodstock.
Through their partnership, Le Wagon and Red & Yellow aim to help South African talent build the necessary soft skills and an entrepreneurial mindset required by employers and the new world of work, according to a statement.
“For years, Red & Yellow has been South Africa's leading authority in digital marketing education,” says Verusha Maharaj, MD of Red & Yellow and lead at Le Wagon South Africa.
“We have always focused on next-generation skills, and we realised that coding has become a crucial part of this – hence the decision to partner with the leading coding bootcamp in the world.”
With campuses in 45 locations around the world, Le Wagon offers intensive bootcamps in an effort to enable the greatest number of people tolearn digital skills.
Its bootcamps in web development and data science aim to enable a student − within 360 hours of study, coding, digital exercises and group projects − to build their own web applications from scratch, or work autonomously on data science projects.
Available in full-time (nine weeks) or part-time (24 weeks) formats, the programme equips students with the requisite skills and internationally-recognised certification for future-fit professions across the globe, notes the statement.
“Equipping graduates with the right skills in key sectors is critical to driving transformation and supporting inclusive growth,” says Ryan Brouwer, manager of Le Wagon Cape Town.
“Coding bootcamps respond to this challenge, offering a practical and intensive format to both entry-level and mature learners, providing them with the ability to become a competent junior web developer within just three months.”
Once the bootcamps are over, Le Wagon assists the students to find work via its careers week initiative, which it says is designed to ready alumni to enter the job market by teaching them how to build their portfolios and resumes, and preparing them for the interview process.
To foster the local tech ecosystem, Le Wagon has committed to hosting free coding workshops and tech talks twice a month.
States Brouwer: “Although Cape Town can be regarded as one of the major tech hubs in Africa, in global terms it's still relatively young. Cities like Lisbon have, for the past few years, focused heavily on developing this scene through incentivising innovation, focusing on improving the availability of coding education, and creating mechanisms for small start-ups to connect with potential investors.
“The result has transformed the city into Europe’s ‘Silicon Valley'. Cape Town has similar potential to become this for Africa, and the impact that it could have for the broader economy is far-reaching.”
The next Cape Town web development course, which is a full-time coding bootcamp, will start on 29 August.
Click here to apply.
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