State Of Code Training 2019: Survey results on software development training in Côte d’Ivoire

Code d’Ivoire is a developer community founded in Abidjan March 2018. It functions primarily through our Slack organization, where our members can interact every day and keep a constant line of communication open. Our mission centers around the following objectives:

• Become a home for coders, where members can find kindred spirits
• Share knowledge, best practices and technology needed to help the larger developer community grow in skills (“A rising tide lifts all boats”).
• Promote the coding craft and professions in Ivory Coast et help the country become an African and global showcase for coding abilities.

We’ve started a set of activities in Abidjan to further these goals along that can be summarized as:

• Produce written code tutorials that our currently shared on our community blog on Medium (https://medium.com/code-divoire)
• Produce video tutorials and lectures shared every Wednesday on our Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/codedivoire) in our Code Moderne (Modern Code) series.
• Showcase Made in CI (Ivory Coast) tools.
• Take a pulse of the coding profession and training through an annual survey, State of the Code.

The Annual State of the Code Training Survey

After the 2018 edition, we felt it necessary to separate the surveys between 2 audiences, professional developers on on side, and students/learners on another. For the first edition of the specialized annual student survey, we wanted to take the pulse on the state of code training in Côte d’Ivoire, more precisely:

• Who are the software development students in Côte d’Ivoire?
• What are the technologies, processes and practices taught during the trainings?
• How are they trained?
• What are their successes and failures?
• How much do the trainings cost?
• How do they feel about their training and how it prepares them for the job market in terms of skills?

The costs associated with the survey this year were covered by par the Ivorian technology startup AKIL Technologies. The survey took place over 4 months (September to December 2019), using a 25-question questionnaire available online that was shared on the community’s social networks and by community members to gather the maximum number of answers possible, ending up with 96 respondents in total. Special thanks to our partners who facilitated the preparation and distribution of the survey this year and allowed us to maximize the number of respondents.

Journee Du Code

Journee Du Code

Simplon CI

Simplon CI

GDG Cocody

GDG Cocody

AKIL Technologies

AKIL Technologies

Survey Results

In this article, we present the results of the survey, sometimes including for the sake of perspective and analysis the comments we took from the presentation of the survey’s results to community members at the after-work event held on 21 December 2019 at AKIL Technologies.

Question 1

Question 1: Gender

No surprise here, the industry is still dominated by men, but it is worth noting the awareness and training work done by local structures such as Hakili, Simplon and Sheisthecode which is beginning to bear fruit in terms of increasing the percentage of women in the field.

Question 2

Question 2: How old are you?

The majority of students (63.16%) are under the age of 24 but a third (34.74%) are between 25 and 34 years old.

Question 3

Question 3: Which programming languages have you used so far during your training?

The most used languages during training are in order, PHP (77.89%), Javascript (73.69%) and SQL (67.37%). It should always be noted here the still too strong presence of obsolete languages such as Pascal (34%) and Visual Basic (28%) which are still used in algorithmic courses.

Question 4

Question 4: What programming languages would you like to learn?

The language that students are most interested in is clearly Python at 62.11%, yet it is only used in 31% of training curriculums (check Question 3).

Question 5

Question 5: Which databases have you used so far during your training?

MySQL clearly dominates the databases taught at 94.62%.

Question 6

Question 6: Have you learned source code management (version management)?

Here the notorious fact is that the majority (57.89%) of students are not introduced to source code management, which nowadays is one of the basics of software development. This figure should be taken with a grain of salt, however, given the results of the next question.

Question 7

Question 7: Do you have a Github account?

63.16% of students say they have a Github account. In contrast to the previous question which reveals that 57.89% of the students have not learned source code management, we can make the following inferences:

• Either the students learned source code management independently through Github and their external learning sources.
• Or in response to question 6, respondents did not make the connection between Github being used for source code management, which would clearly indicate a lack of understanding of the concept.

Question 8

Question 8: Do you have a Gitlab account?

30.43% of students have a Gitlab account.

Question 9

Question 9: Do you have a Bitbucket account?

17.58% of students have a Bitbucket account.

Question 10

Question 10: What project management techniques have you studied?

More than half of the learners do not learn project management techniques, which is not surprising as most school curricula do not include this part which is more related to professional practices.

Question 11

Question 11: Where are you getting your training?

Most software students are trained at colleges and universities.

Question 12

Question 12: What is your highest level of education at the moment?

At the time of training, one third of the learners already have a Bachelor’s degree (3 years of study). A quarter already have a BTS (2 years of study).

Question 13

Question 13: What level of education will you achieve after your training?

The majority (30.85%) of respondents are following a course that will lead to a Master’s degree.

Question 14

Question 14: How much does your training cost per year?

The majority of training courses cost less than 250000 FCFA (US $422/ €378) per year, which is not surprising given that the BTS (Brevet de Technicien Supérieur) is sponsored by the government (for half the cost).

Question 15

Question 15: What would increase your satisfaction with your training/studies?

A strong majority (84%) of respondents would like more training focused on practical courses and internships, thus more in line with market demands.

Question 16

Question 16: Which developer community do you belong to?

The majority of respondents (50%) do not belong to any developer community.

Question 17

Question 17: What specialization would you like to pursue after your training?

The majority of respondents would like to specialize in Data Science after their training. This, along with the popularity of Python denoted above is a testament to the local popularity of Data Science, AI and machine learning that has seen many events taking place during 2019.

Question 18

Question 18: Would you like to do a work-linked training course (internship/ work study)?

There is an absolute interest in this model of work/study training.

Question 19

Question 19: Would you like to take part in company projects during your training?

The result again reinforces the interest in training based on practical projects, especially from companies.

Question 20

Question 20: Are you satisfied with your training?

Just over one-third (35.87%) of respondents are satisfied, but the majority (42.39%) are dissatisfied with their training.

Question 21

Question 21: Do you have a personal computer?

90.22% of respondents have a personal computer.

Question 22

Question 22: Do you have access to the Internet?

Half (51%) of the respondents have access to the Internet from time to time, and 40% have 24 hours access.

Question 23

Question 23: In your personal research, have you had to learn new things outside of school?

97% of the respondents here have conducted their personal research that allowed them to learn new things. This result is encouraging because to succeed in a career as a developer you have to be able to research effectively.

Question 24

Question 24: Are you changing careers?

A little over a quarter of the respondents are in vocational retraining or changing careers.

Question 25

Here are some samples of opinions shared by the survey’s respondents in response to being asked their opinion on the Ivorian dev ecosystem.

“I am disappointed with the state of Ivory Coast side it has oriented us in schools where there is no access to Internet for a computer scientist its calamitous also everything is theory… please tell the state to send a new subject called projects for us to practice”.

“Update the trainings, improve the exams and contests (too many cheats), offer advantages due to the cost of the school, improve the curriculum (with lectures and everything)”.

“Things are far too theoretical and the programs are not being followed.”
“I’ve had to discover the benefits of peer to peer learning.”

“I’m currently undergoing training that I find limited because the notions learned, especially in programming, are mostly obsolete.”

“I’d really like to get some more hands-on training.”

“The training we get is structured in the same way as in IT companies.”

“We must make a point of honour of practice. Allow students to create computer clubs to participate in competitions.”

“I find that the training is very much focused on old technology. We should just skim over it and focus on the newer technologies.”

“The training I get at ******** is not the training that allows me to deliver solutions today to my clients. It’s been my own research. My advice is to train supervisors in the best specialties of computer programming in order to make the students benefit widely (virtual and even Ivorian)”.

Summary

We hope that this survey will shed more light on the software training environment in Côte d’Ivoire. There is still a lot of work to be done to transform the Ivorian developer ecosystem into a global model of skills and innovation and each year the data revealed in this survey allows us to measure our progress and also gives the stakeholders with the consequent means to make better decisions which we hope will result in an acceleration of this progress.

If you share our excitement for the future of Cote d’Ivoire, and for the potential of Ivorian developers, join us in making your contribution to the building, and contribute to the rising tide of Made in CI code.

We’re also already preparing the 2020 editions, so If you’re an organization interested in partnering with us, give us a shout at codeivoire.io at gmail.com.

Thank you for reading us so far, for any questions or suggestions, contact us at codeivoire.io at gmail.com.