Coding is essential in South Africa as it helps with the innovation of new ideas. This is according to Lebo Miya, MD of Ekasi Code Club, a company that focuses on taking unemployed youth and turning them into employed junior developers.
"Coding is important for South Africa because it provides people with an opportunity to innovate and create new things which are unique to the South African context.
"From new tech businesses to social entrepreneurship solutions, coding really allows people to become masters of content, creating as well as consuming." Miya said.
"Access to opportunity is currently the biggest problem faced by local coders. Many people are hindered in their endeavours by either not having a reliable/up to specs devices to work on, or Internet capabilities being lacklustre. We also don't really provide enough educational material around code and the doors it can open."
Learning basic coding skills will open up more professional work opportunities as employers now require more in terms of tech flexibility, whether or not an occupation is directly involved in the implementation of ICT systems.
It is also important to teach coding to children as it improves their logical thinking, as training specialist, Moira De Roche says: "Apart from the obvious benefit of getting more children interested in a career in IT, teaching coding has spin-off benefits such as learning logical thinking and problem-solving."
South African schools struggle to implement coding into their basic curriculum, with social and educational transformation still hot on everyone's lips, Yolanda Klaas, a journalism student at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) explains.
"Prior to getting into journalism, I studied IT at Northlink College. Before stepping into that lecture hall, I had never, in all my years at both primary and high school, even touched a computer."
"There is only one school in my township, its only focus being the basic implementation of the school curriculum."
"Even today, the combined primary/high school I attended does not have any computers, making it harder for pupils to dream big and even apply to university."
With initiatives like WeThinkCode, Code for South Africa, GirlHYPE and many other coding programmes, young South Africans are slowly getting exposed to more opportunities in the digital sector.
Claire Jowell, Senior Ecosystem Manager at Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi) says: "Universities and colleges need to take a far more agile approach to coding and digital skills.
Other than your regular BSc in Computer Science and related degrees, universities do not offer much where coding is concerned.
"The curriculum should be led by industry demand and trends, and constantly updated. There are so many great online courses out there for those looking to learn coding. We definitely do not need to re-invent the wheel, but rather work to curate valuable content, and build job-readiness and training on top of core skills," Jowell adds.
"We don't just need more graduates, we need more employable graduates."
Coding is a much-needed proficiency South Africans should be equipped with.
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