Youth coding accelerator Zone01, owned by the Kisumu-based LakeHub, is planning on training hundreds of young Kenyans to code, and place them in jobs, via a KES10 million (US$80,000) grant from KIEP-SKIES.
Founded last year, Zone01 Kisumu trains and provides jobs in tech to at least 100 youths in Kisumu County every year. It does this by offering a two-year fully-funded software development training, followed by a three-year guaranteed job contract.
The programme is a partnership between LakeHub, Kisumu County Government, 01 Talent Africa and the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLGA), and is now benefitting from the KES10 million grant secured from the Kenya Industry and Entrepreneurship Project-Strengthening Kenya’s Innovation Ecosystem (KIEP-SKIES) training initiative.
“There is a global shortage of 4.5 million coders. We want to train part of Africa’s growing youth population to fill these roles. Because higher education is expensive, exclusive and out of touch with current and ever-evolving tech industry, we think that by offering a tuition-free, stipend-paid, peer-to-peer learning, two-year training, we can kill two birds – youth unemployment and shortage of skilled coders – with one stone,” Dorcas Owino, managing director of Zone01, told Disrupt Africa.
Over 13,000 applications were received for cohort one, which selected 100 youths to be paid a US$100 stipend per month as they undergo coding training for two years. The waiting list for cohort two stands at 600 and counting.
“We are currently using up resources to upskill the talents. Once done, we’ll deploy them to the market as Zone01 Kisumu staff to work on tech projects and get paid. Essentially, we’ll outsource their skills to companies who’ll pay us for using our talent. The talent will not be required to pay back any money to us,” Owino said.
For now, it is grant-funded, by KIEP-SKIES, which intends to retool hundreds of techies from across the country to equip them with critical ICT skills for the fast-evolving job market through four bootcamp intermediaries tasked to implement the KIEP-SKIES rapid technical skills training initiative in Kenya. In this regard, the grant reward will subsidise the cost of tuition for Zone01 Kisumu apprentices as well as scale up the programme.
“This grant will boost our efforts to attract more women to the tech industry as well as maintain our promise of providing sustenance stipends to our trainees,” said Owino.
