Three City of Cape Town libraries represented South Africa with pride at the Mandela World Coding Championship last Tuesday, which was also the 10th anniversary of Madiba’s passing.
The three teams placed in the top 10 – they are Belhar, Ocean View and Valhalla Park’s library teams, which competed against 55 teams from 21 countries in the virtual competition.
The atmosphere at the libraries was electric and the teams were fired up, supported by the coaches, library staff and members of the public.
Ocean View scooped third place, while Belhar and Valhalla Park placed sixth and eighth place respectively.
The City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services and Health, Councillor Patricia van der Ross, says: “What makes this achievement more amazing, is that the teams have only been coding for a few short months.
“They have done the City proud and we are impressed by their analytical and problem-solving skills. They’ve done well and I want to encourage more young people to join the coding clubs at participating libraries.”
The unplugged coding initiative was led at City libraries through a small team led by Randal Rousseau, a librarian at Bonteheuwel Library.
The dedicated staff at the individual libraries, notably Ulfah Davids from Ocean View Library and Shadwell Overmeyer from Valhalla Park Library, coached their teams tirelessly. The South African contingent went up against teams from Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Germany and the United States.
Tangible Africa is responsible for creating coding applications, TANKS and RANGERS, which allow participants to play offline, using minimal resources.
By downloading a very small app (7MB), participants can play TANKS or RANGERS offline, using the app and the tokens from the game packs.
To find out more about coding in your region, contact info@levafoundation.org.
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