The Africa Code Week (ACW) initiative has succeeded in less than half the time on its initial targets
of introducing digital literacy to African children and youths. With an original 10-year vision (2015–2025) to
introduce 5 million African youth to information and communication technology (ICT) and coding, it achieved the target in 2019, having trained a combined 7.95 million youth. This paper analyzes how the project has been able to achieve this lofty target, discussing how the project’s core values were adapted across constituents. A closer look into some of the events and how it was organized serves as sample case study. The outlook of ACW and how it established various sustainable patterns of engagement form the 3rd part of the paper, which includes the public-private partnership in place that effectively helped to drive the project and the importance of accelerating 21st-century skill development in traditional school systems through effective collaboration. Also discussed is how the concept of mass education can help drive the skills ecosystem in Africa, taking a cue from the project, and the necessity of shifting unproductive education policies to accommodate innovation, creativity, and growth in the digital economy. The initiative was designed with educators and school leaders’ inclusion, which partly helped lay the groundwork for sustenance. Finally, this paper recommends as a value proposition the pattern established to be used for other wide-ranging initiatives on the continent and elsewhere to build the much-needed skilled workforce of the future.
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