Emzini weCode
Having been inspired by an introductory coding and computer science class at Berkeley, a young man from Zimbabwe is replicating his experience for talented students in his home country—launching their academic journeys into schools like Northwestern and Stanford.
Like many young Zimbabweans, Eric Khumalo didn’t have a lot of options, even for a curious mind like his. He found a breakthrough moment, however, in a U.S.-sponsored school near his home town of Wulau.
A fascination with coding merged with a desire for sharing knowledge, and a background in teaching that would end with Khumalo starting Emzini WeCode, an education program that has grown from teaching locals in Zimbabwe classrooms at the American embassy to hosting online classes for more than 1,000 students.
“I graduated high school in 2018, and within the government there was a shortage of STEM teachers, so I applied for a year and a half,” Eric told GNN. “I taught at three high schools and got accepted into UC Berkeley on a scholarship from the Mastercard Foundation.”
“I wanted to study so many things! I was going to go with chemistry, I was just like ‘okay, I really need to understand how these molecules behave.’”
Like so many successful students, it was the chance encounter with the fabled “good professor” that launched Eric’s computer science journey.
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“I was just like asking questions, and then he told me just about his journey, about how when he was a kid he learned to code; he would make games, and for me I just admired the wonderful things he could accomplish with just code,” says Khumalo. “I found it interesting—this power to create, and this power to solve problems, or if you have a solution—scaling it is possible with computer science.”
Afro-tech
Emzini weCode
Interest in computer science and technology is squarely in the focus of young Africans, not least in those who have taken Eric’s classes at Emzini WeCode, like Nandi Siluma, a teaching assistant at Emzini, who is also a junior at Northwestern University.
“The end goal is to have every child in Zimbabwe, and Africa, knowing how to write, interpret, and manipulate code,” says Siluma.
“I do feel like I am part of a movement to reduce the knowledge gap between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres; that is why I joined Emzini WeCode because I am passionate about sharing learning opportunities with others,” says Proud Npala, another teaching assistant, who took his own experience with Emzini and landed a scholarship at Stanford.
According to Adama Sanneh of the Moleskin Foundation ,who helps run the WikiAfrica Education Program, there’s more information on the city of Paris on Wikipedia, for example, than the entire African continent. Khumalo sees Emizini as a way to close that gap in tech-know-how.
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“The main problem I wanted to tackle was job creation,” explains Khumalo, whose January classes are now open for enrolment online for 1,000 students.
“I’ve seen, mostly when I was teaching, that my students’ parents or relatives, mostly they all go to South Africa to work, and how they go there is usually… illegal,” he said. “Through Emzini WeCode at least my number one goal is …….