Does Cape Town need another Code School?
An investigation into the state of short-term jobs-focused programming education in Cape Town and viability overview for a new code school
About the Author
Chris Owen is the co-founder of Social Hackers Academy, a code school for vulnerable groups based in Athens, Greece. Professionally, he is a Computer Science graduate from the UK and has seven years of experience as an Android Developer as well as experience in other languages. He has a passion for teaching and mentoring which has influenced many areas of his life.
Created: March 2019
Terminology
- Code School / Bootcamp — A medium length coding program that usually focuses on practical programming skills over theory, usually with the aim of employment after completing the course.
- Township — A low income settlement in South Africa usually surrounding a major metropolitan hub.
Preface
Objective
In this piece, I want to investigate and explore the code school ecosystem in South Africa and evaluate to what extent it properly addresses the needs of the local population. The ultimate aim of this report is to evaluate the feasibility of starting a new branch of Social Hackers Academy; a code school for disenfranchised groups.
History
Over the past three months I’ve been living in Cape Town with the aim to determine the business and social viability of launching a new branch of our code school, Social Hackers Academy. We are proudly part of a coalition of code schools across Europe who share a common curriculum and teaching style that now boasts ten schools across the continent.
In 2017, we started the first free code school in Greece with the initial plan to help to tackle the refugee crisis that continues even today. For the next year, I acted as Head of Education and Board Member for the charity and over this time we launched four classes of students and mentored them through the often difficult process of learning how to code. It was hacky, it was bootstrapped but against all the odds it worked. Through the force of will of our team of volunteers, our committed students, our donors and our team we brought the students through our seven month course and found jobs for people who would have been otherwise jobless. You can read my personal feelings about this process and why I feel it’s important here.
By this point, we had confirmed that our model works. We were the fifth code school in our network but by the start of 2019 we boasted a network of ten. We knew at this point that the model that we had produced worked and so we started searching for new locations to launch a school. Our first task was researching a location that had similar challenged to Greece and then evaluate if this location was suitable to support a school.
Location Viability
What made Athens a great location for a free code school can be boiled down to three distinct parts.
- High Unemployment
When I arrived into Greece the unemployment rate stood at 21.7% for the general population and rising to 38.7% when targeting only 20–24 year olds. Looking at the refugee population alone the statistics become more hazy with lots of migrants taking part in unofficial part-time employment however it’s expected that refugee unemployment exceeds that of Greek nationals. Mass unemployment has become the norm since the 2008 financial crisis and the following years of severe sanctions put in place by the EU which put enormous strain on the Greek economy.
But from this adversity we saw opportunity. With such a high unemployment rate people are open to the idea of retraining outside of their existing skill set and taking a gamble to try a completely new career. Particularly we saw young “digital natives” who may already possess the computer skills needed as a base to become a programmer but did not receive the correct education in school to prepare them for a modern workforce. We believed that it would be possible to work with these people to enable them to find well payed, secure jobs.
2. Booming Tech Sector
Over the past nine years the Greek tech start-up scene has seen investment to the tune of 2.4 billion euros and is outstripping the growth in Greece’s traditional bread winners of tourism and agriculture which have stayed fairly stable across the country over the period (with the exception of some Greek islands who suffered greatly to the negative press generated by the refugee crisis).
Speaking to companies we found that there was a dire need for qualified, job ready, developers to continue the growth of their companies and to combat the brain drain that was a problem for Greek companies who were seeing potential talent flee to Western Europe in search of high wages.
3. Flowing Philanthropic Capital
Despite the worst of the refugee crisis moving away from Greece to other southern European countries and the global crisis funding moving from the Europe stage, to the crisis's developing in Myanmar and Turkey there was still a large amount of funding available from foundations and at a higher level, the EU. We also found local venture capitalists to be friendly to the cause as they understand both the mission and the value of the education that we provided.
Suggested Locations
Given these three criteria, we highlighted that Spain and South Africa to be viable places to operate a new code school in. From here we reached out to an organisation in Barcelona that we had met previously who had expressed an interest in working with previously and offered to help them set up a school with them.
Meanwhile, I focused on evaluating South Africa as a potential location for expansion. In my research I found striking similarities between Athens and Cape Town especially. From the work of the Silicon Cape initiative whose sole aim it to increase the tech start-up scene in Cape Town to the staggeringly high youth employment in the city it offered a very strong case for a good location for a new branch of Social Hackers.
On the funding front, South Africa operates a system where all companies who employ over a defined number of employees must invest at least 1% of their profits into a training fund that will be used to train people in their sector e.g. an engineering company will give a portion of their profits to train new engineers. This model, to my knowledge, is quite unique to South Africa and offers a real incentive and substantial funding base to companies who can prove they can provide valuable education to South African citizens.
It is also an unfortunate fact that South Africa faces it’s own unemployment crisis with the national unemployment rate sitting at 27.1% and is rising 0.2% quarter-on-quarter. This rises to 38.2% of people when you select only those aged 15–35.
Across these three areas, we found Cape Town a very viable location for a new school. I was fortunate enough to work for an employer who was open to remote working for the final two months of my contract and so I relocated to Cape Town in order to evaluate, on the ground, if the Social Hackers model could be applied outside of a European setting.
Existing Code Schools in South Africa
A full breakdown can be found of existing code schools can be found on this community run website:
https://www.codeschooldirectory.co.za
and a shorter breakdown is shown here:
What will be initially striking is the sheer number of code schools that are operating in South Africa certainly thanks to the huge amount of funding that comes from the Training Investment model that is described above.
I’d like to take a moment to compare the import differences between what we’ve found to be the differences between code schools in South Africa and in Europe.
Length
Broadly, the length of code school in South Africa is much longer than that in Europe. In London, you might expect to spend approximately 3–6 months in a code school before you are expected to know enough to land a job. However, in SA I’ve found that all schools operated in the 1–2 year time frame with all of them promoting a full time schedule.
The drastic difference can be explained by a few factors. Firstly, internet access is an important difference between SA and the EU as much of the poorer regions around Cape Town only have ready access to the internet via a mobile connection which is very expensive, even by European standards.
Stipends
To my knowledge, code schools based in European do not offer any kind of sponsorship or stipend for their students as often the state will give money to people who are full-time education or unemployed. This level of social security does not exist to such a direct way in South Africa and so NGO and Education providers will often full the gap. Most often this is in the range of R2000 (~123€) per month which is used to support some of the students costs during the time that they’re in the course. Some courses also offer accommodation at a reduced rate to their students.
Project Spotlight
In this section I want to outline both the largest and the most interesting projects operating in Cape Town.
WeThinkCode
As the largest code school in South Africa, WeThinkCode is the first port of a call for anybody wanting to know about the code school ecosystem in the country.
- Website: https://www.wethinkcode.co.za
- Location: Johannesburg and Cape Town
- Price: Free
- Length of Course: Twenty- four months
- Established: 2016
WTC use the 42 school curriculum which is a holistic software engineering program developed by a team in Paris. It covers topics reaching from C to web development to digital encoding. The course is mainly student driven in a form of peep-to-peer learning that is supported by a comprehensive online platform where all tasks are assigned and submitted. This model allows WTC to scale to very large numbers of students very quickly as they currently teach 200 students per year in both of their campuses.
Students are offered a stipend and on-site accommodation for those that require it. A fully equipped campus is available for all students where they can access iMacs, a stable wifi connection and have access to smaller breakaway rooms for group tasks.
As far as results go, WTC currently runs at a roughly 60%+ graduation rate over the two years. This leaves room for improvement but is an admirable rate when you look at the scale of the project and the scale that they’ve been able to reach in such a short amount of time. They’ve managed to build connections to most of South Africa’s largest employers and boast a 80%+ placement rate for those that graduate from the course. They are also South Africa’s most well funded code school having raised over R26m+ over their three years in operation.
Project CodeX
CodeX are a social enterprise who have developed an innovative model that reacts to market needs.
- Website: http://www.projectcodex.co
- Location: Cape Town
- Price: R60,000; Large number of sponsorships and scholarships
- Length of Course: Twelve months
- Established: 2014
CodeX offer courses in Java and Full Stack Web Dev and are primarily a jobs focused code school. They offer a peer-to-peer taught curriculum supplemented by workshops delivered by either professional developers or graduates from their programs. The program is a full-time course that operates mostly during work hours.
They offer all students a stipend which can cover some living and transport costs whilst on the course. A well equipped workspace is offered during working hours where students can access fast wifi and computers.
Where Codex is strongest is in reacting to what companies need in the workforce and then training students in those technologies. Most recently they secured funding from a global accountancy firm to supply them with qualified Java developers with the aim of placing their students in the company when they graduate from the course. By bridging the gap between business and education I believe they’ve found a way for the business world to support social objectives in a way that moves beyond the normal charitable model.
ByteAcademy
Run by software development team ByteOrbit, this apprenticeship scheme is an impressive model for a small company to use.
- Website: https://academy.byteorbit.com
- Location: Cape Town
- Price: Free
- Length of Course: Six months followed by an internship
- Established: 2017
Despite ByteOrbit being a relatively small company (15–50 staff) they have committed to an admirable program of offering three apprenticeships per year to people who have never programmed before. Over the year they are taught to code in a process combining tutoring and paired programming on real life projects working alongside their team of staff. By embedding their students right within the company they can safely know that all of their graduates are proficient in the technologies that the company uses.
ByteAcademy pay all of their students a wage of roughly R10,000 rand per month as well as offering lunch two times a week.
After the course, successful students are offered a permanent position at the company if they desire. Although small (and ultimately quite hard to scale), this scheme is a an admirable approach to the problems that South Africa faces in terms of unemployment and is one that larger businesses should take note of.
The Coding Ground
Based in the heart of a township, this non-profit takes jobs training directly to those that need it most.
- Website: http://thecodingground.com
- Location: Diepsloot (near Johannesburg)
- Price: Free but with internship at company required
- Length of Course: Twelve months plus internship
- Established: 2016
In my research, I was unable to find any organisation that operates on a permanent basis directly inside a township, teaching those that need the education most. They operate a full time course that specialises in Python, Javascript and C# and gives every student that graduates the course an internship at a local company. By locating themselves directly in a township they fix one of the critical problems that many of code schools in South Africa face as often, students will have to travel for between 1–2 hours each way, every day to be able to attend classes. This is costly and excludes many would-be coders from attending some of the larger schools.
Can Cape Town support another code school?
As covered above, South Africa and Cape Town currently host a huge number of code schools covering a large array of technologies, sectors and demographics. Having such a fantastic selection of code schools is, of course, excellent for the South African people. It shows there is a strong market requirement for developers as well as a healthy population of people who are keen to learn how to code. However, it does raise a very important question for Social Hackers early on. Can Cape Town support another code school?
Firstly, a new code school would not only be competing for funding which (although there is a surprisingly large pool of) is already hotly contested but also for students. It is an unfortunate fact that the intense, self-driven nature of a code school is not the best setting for some people, be that because of a lower base education background, outside commitments (e.g. children, part-time job, carer) or a whole host of other areas which take up normal peoples time. For this reason, the pool of people that would excel in this kind of environment may be limited and from my experience in Greece the single largest determining factor of a successful cohort of students is the level that they start at.
In speaking to code schools in Cape Town, I’ve also found that they are still trying to tackle the inertia found in companies to accept code school graduates as viable employees. That is to say that, corporates like to see the BSc on the CV before they will even consider an applicant. This inertia is somewhat typical and is a form of the old saying “Nobody Gets Fired For Buying IBM”, that is, it’s not your fault if you make a bad hire from university but if you take a chance on the outsider then the burden falls on you. It is, however, another worrying aspect of the South African tech ecosystem that they have still not seen the value in a highly specific programming education.
Speaking to companies in the area I’ve found that lots absolutely espouse the view that they want to take on more junior coders however when I dug deeper I found that while the intent is present in these companies many are still requiring a hiring level of skill that what a junior developer can offer.
On the other hand, on the demand side there is certainly the appetite. In WeThinkCode’s latest application round they were inundated with over 60,000 applications for a course which has only 200 positions. This obviously speaks both to the perceived opportunities in learning how to code but also to the desperation of the millions of people in the region who live on or below the poverty line. Needless to say however, the students exist.
Additionally, it is impossible to say that the Cape Town tech scene isn’t growing at an incredible rate. In one piece of research Cape Town was declared to be “Africa’s tech capital” and from simply my experiences in the city there is a thriving start-up community. This year Amazon will open their first AWS data centre just outside of the city centre which will be the first on the Africa continent. This not only speaks to the perceived long term future of the country (many fear that political instability is a threat to international investors) but also the skill of Capetonian developers. It is a little know fact that Amazon’s scalable computing solution, EC2, was invented in Cape Town by local developers way back in 2005 before it was taken to the USA and scaled.
Capital is flowing into the city and innovators are tackling problems that are unique both to South Africa and to Africa in general be that using technology to enable crop growth in arid regions, using VR to teach safe mining techniques or breaking the cycle of poverty by enabling cheap internet access in townships. These are big problems that are being tackled in a fast growing ecosystem. All of these companies will, in the end, need talent and as more companies grow they will be willing to accept a lower skilled graduate and train them up as it become economically viable.
Tangentially related to the growing tech scene is the currently untapped resource for Cape Town to be an outsourcing solution for companies based in London or Silicon Valley. A senior developer in Cape Town can be expected to earn around R600,000 per year (~$42,000) which is around one quarter of what a similarly skilled developer in California would expect. Pair this with English being a dominant language for much of the country and the fact that it sits only 1–2 hours time zones away from both Berlin and London and you have recipe for a technical skills hub that offers the same value for money as developers in Bulgaria or Slovakia but with the benefit of a reduced cultural barrier.
Despite the extensive competition the above research brings me to one conclusion, I believe that Cape Town does have the growth and funding available to support another code school. This, of course, only raises another question. Is a new code school the correct solution for a city that has so many?
Challenges
Travel
On the whole, Cape Town does not have the comprehensive public transit network that you might see in a European city partially due to funding but also in part because on average more South African own a car than in other cities. For this reason, many people travel multi-hour journeys every day to reach the city which restricts the amount of time they can spend working, particularly if they have children or other dependants at home.
Access to Internet
As of January 2018, 40% of South Africa still lacked access to the internet. This lack of internet access is means that it is hard for citizens to access even basic information about how the country is run
Mobile data is also very expensive for the average South African as 2GB of data can cost as much as R298 (~$20.88). Compare this to the UK where the same amount of data can be had for as little at £7 (~$9.26) without even taking into account the purchasing power parity of the two currencies.
Safety
Possibly the largest difference between SA and the EU is the general safety levels that exist both in the country and in the townships where most of the people live. I spoke to a member of staff from Harambee who make a striking comment when I spoke about how some of our students in Greece lived in refugee camps, she said that:
…most of the people we work with live in conditions similar to a refugee camp…
Townships, like refugee camps, are not safe places to be or places that are conductive to studying. It’s the reason that in Greece we offered a small work space that students could work from all the time even though it cost us some time and money to keep this area running and could only run it sporadically. It appears that SA code schools tackle this by offering fully equipped computer labs that are open the majority of the time so that the students have somewhere to study from.
Poverty
Both abject and extreme poverty are rife in South Africa in 2019 and in trouble statistics this is not a problem that is going to be solved in the immediate future.
This is a deep and complex issue that I won’t go into in this article. However, much has been written on the subject and is readily available.
Accreditation
Compared to my experiences in Greece, South Africa has a quite progressive approach to accreditation and the rewards that are associated with it. All education centres can be evaluated for a CETA accreditation which essentially means that they have evaluated the programmes offered and deemed them to be of acceptable value to the country. This gives these training providers the following benefits:
- Government paid stipends can be given to students
- Tax breaks are given to companies who hire graduates from CETA accredited organisations
- Tax breaks are given to companies who donated to CETA accredited organisations
This means that it is heavily in the favour of a business to to hire from established and accredited organisations rather than newer organisations.
Becoming a CETA accredited organisation can take, anecdotally, between nine months and year.
Does Cape Town need another code school?
After nearly three thousands words I’m going to give a possibly frustrating answer to the question…
No. and Yes.
On one front, launching a new code school adds to the quite frankly intimidating selection of options that would-be students already have. It’s taken my roughly two months to evaluate and explore all the options available and that’s coming from a position that I understand the intricate differences between each of the offered courses.
At every code school that I’ve spoke to over the past three months I’ve found people re-inventing the wheel in finding solutions to the problems that people in South Africa face. I believe that at this point in South Africa’s code school development what needs to happen is for them to scale.
Right now, across all code schools you have roughly ~1200 students per year graduating and becoming developers. For reference, the school ‘42’ in Paris has 1000 concurrent students and that is just one code school. There is always room for growth and it is at this point that Cape Town must redouble it’s efforts.
In my time here, one of the most impressive business that I’ve spoke to are Harambee. By teaching easy to learn, practical skills that specialise in getting people to the minimum requirement in order to get a job they have so far found jobs for 95,000 young people. On the single day that I visited their office I saw over 150 people gaining the crucial skills training that they need to find a job. In January, Harambee announced a drive to upskill and find jobs in digital skills for 5000 people over the next three years and I believe it is this level of scale that must be aimed for when trying to tackle the dire problems of unemployment that South Africa is facing.
For anybody thinking about starting a new code school in South Africa I’d implore them to think very hard about your decision before you commit. There are plenty of fantastic non-profit and for-profit companies who have solved many of the initial problems that you will face. Many of them have space that you can use, they have solved the problems of travel and of stipends, many have already gained the accreditation needed to give companies tax breaks from hiring their students. Unless you are offering something completely new I would suggest reaching out to any one of the existing charities
If you already run a code school, I’d encourage you to keep reading about how I believe Cape Town can benefit from the scaling of it’s existing Code Schools.
How to grow?
I see three main areas for scaling in Cape Town.
Graduation and Placement Rate
At every school that I’ve visited I’ve seen they seem to attain good results in terms of the education that they provide but they all spend a significant amount of time finding and maintaining relationships with employers in order to find their graduates suitable roles. This takes up a significant amount of resources at each organisation and means that employers have to build individual relationships with each company in order to hire good talent.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that, each of these organisations are competing against each other in order to make sure their students get hired. This is unfortunate as common goals exists and so I believe the best approach would be for an outside third party to capitalise on the inefficiencies and offer a placement service directly for bootcamp graduates. Unless code schools operate on a model of charging companies a commission on each placement they have nothing to lose from such an arrangement.
Class Size and Quantity
One obvious area where gains can be made is by simply pushing the currently accepted limits on the size and number of classes being run as each institution. This is, when it comes down to it, a funding problem. Some organisations (most notably WeThinkCode) have already conducted excellent work in leveraging the power and capital of corporates to socially positive wends.
Standardisation and Partnerships
By far the most common course that is taught at coding schools is the a Full Stack Web Development because it is very easy to get setup, doesn’t require a high powered computer and there is a vast array of online content to help a new student. However, this means is that effort is duplicated across each of the code schools to deliver a course that is broadly similar.
In addition to this, each of the schools run a pre-course bootcamp which is used to get the students ready for the course and to make sure that they have evaluate if they believe they would have the ability to complete it. Ideally, this could be outsourced to a third-party who could award a certificate that would give schools the confidence they need to know that the students that start the course will be likely to complete it.
Upskilling
At the other end of the spectrum all of the code schools here seem to operate on a 80%+ employment rate for those students that finish the course. Compared to the 95%+ that we were attaining in the European code schools this would suggest to me that:
a. There is a very competitive jobs market for junior developers
b. Companies are still selecting students from traditional Computer Science background over bootcamps
c. The course material’s don’t quite line up to what companies are requiring.
Similar to how a third-party company could offer pre-course certificates it would be interesting to see a similar post-course scheme which would take junior developers who are unable to find a job and train them in the technologies that companies are looking for. These would be very short (1–4 week) courses that would be produced in tandem with the business world to get candidates to the level they need to be at to find a job.
Underserved Groups
Despite the fantastic work of the companies in this sector I’ve identified two areas that a prospective code school could look at bringing education to.
Townships
In my research the only team that take a coding education directly to the people that need it most are The Coding Ground and while I understand some of the apprehensions that some people may have from operating directly in a township I think the potential advantages are huge.
Part Time
As far as I can tell, all of the coding programs in Cape Town are currently offering full time programs and from the people that I’ve spoke to, this makes sense. People have a lot of time and are looking for something that they can dedicate a lot of time too. However, what I worry about is the fact that there may be a large segment of people who are underemployed (say they work in the gig economy) or look after children where a course like this would not be beneficial and perhaps a course which is less structured may be better.
It’s in this capacity that I foresee a future for a Social Hackers Academy style school to thrive. In the appendix I’ve added a breakdown of exactly how we developed a model that allows for maximum flexibility for our students whilst also using our volunteers time in the most valuable way.
Personal Thoughts
On a country level, I believe that hope is a resource that can be earned and spent. It is a complex amalgamation of economic, political, moral and society wills that manifest themselves in the way that people conduct themselves and in the actions that they partake in. Hope determines if people reach out for new opportunities or shelter themselves from the world. Hope, in this country, is in short supply.
Many people have a deep mistrust for the institutions that make up the country and feel that wherever they sit on the racial, social or economic spectrum they are not working for them. For a new future to be realised the change must come from the top down. The South African government (and its associated institutions) must prove to its citizens that it is there to serve them and the South African people must hold them to account in order to do so. Accountability must be restored in the highest echelons of power before the country can truly begin to fix its most core issues. I believe that many South Africans believe that the situation is too far gone to be fixed however it is not so. South Korea, which only turned to democracy in the 1980s, has found its footing in the global markets through an implementation of inclusive institutions that its people can believe in. To break the cycle of poverty before it becomes truly entrenched movement must be made quickly.
In my time here, I’ve seen economic disparity on a scale that I’ve yet to witness anywhere else in the world. I’ve been deeply moved by the stories of the people that I’ve met but also by the sheer scale of the problem at hand. Despite this, I have seen so much resilience. A brighter future does shine for South Africa if only the political will, and hope, remains.
Conclusion
In this article, I’ve tried to explore the code school ecosystem in South Africa and define areas that can be improved.
If you’re considering starting a new code school in South Africa or currently run a code school, please reach out to me on LinkedIn and I’d be happy to discuss what I’ve experienced and researched further.
Appendix
1.0 Our Teaching Model
At Social Hackers, we have a well defined teaching model which consists of the following parts:
- We teach one lesson per week which is delivered by professional developers. This class lasts around four hours.
- Between each lesson, the students have coursework which they must complete before the next lesson. They can complete this in their own time.
- We provide 24 hour support by having a community of developer who use an Instant Messaging platform to support the students. The students are encouraged to help each other complete the homework.
- We offer study groups that are student led at least twice a week.
- Every student is given a laptop when they start the course that they should use to complete all the coursework.
- While the school is structured in a very free form way we still expect student to commit 20 hours or more a week to studying.
