The launch of forloop Zambia
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Nothing stops a programmer on a mission to solve a problem, and there is nothing that is going to stop forloop, it is growing fast and helping connect the developers across the beautiful continent of Africa, forloop is focused on helping developers, students and companies collaborate, share knowledge, build world class competency and share as a pan-african network. forloop aims to be the largest independent developer network with its members building the future of tech in Africa and this is slowly being achieved.
Introducing forloop Zambia
Zambia recently launched a new chapter of the forloop Africa developer community and despite the cold morning that was about 10degrees celcius, people were very excited to hear about forloop and how they can be part of it, so the cold couldn't stand in their way.
The exciting news about the launch of the forloop Zambia chapter was that we were going to have Prosper Otemuyiwa together with Christian Nwamba at the event and they would speak, it was very unfortunate that we couldn't have them with us due to their VISA being denied but we hope this doesn't happen in future meetups.
Our local speakers for the event included Silumesii Maboshe who is the co-found of Bongohive and director of consult at Bongohive, Mukuma Musenge the co-founder of Agora Code Community, Cynthia Mulenga M. Product manager at Mwabu Zambia and we were also privileged to have Remy Muhire who is co-founder of Exuus who traveled all the way from Kigali, Rwanda.
The event was scheduled to begin at 10:00 and some people got there an hour before.
We kickstarted the launch with introduction of forloop and everyone who was present by the time we started, we had about 60 people, it was great to see the diversity of attendees as we had people from Universities both students and graduates, we were also privileged to have some software developers among those new to the field and those who have been doing it for a while, and what was impressive is that we had high school students among and shew interest in being part of the community as they will learning more to become world class developers.
Awesome Presentations
Silumesii Maboshe was our first speaker and he talked about the developer communities and the importance of being part of them.
When you are at the point of feeling frustration, then that is an opportunity. Lukonga Lindunda
Silumesii explained how small developer communities were born at Bongohive after a feeling of frustration of non-existing communities to help bring developers together and bring them together and few that were mentioned are Hackersguild and Asikana Network. — This fit in the idea of having forloop and not just for local developers but also to scale them and give them an international presence.
Our Second speaker was Mukuma Musenge with a very interactive session
THE GOOD. THE BAD & THE UGLY SIDES OF DEVELOPER ADVOCACY. by Mukuma
He explained on being an advocates what it takes and why he considered to be a developer advocate, we got to hear experiences from other developers, he explained on how our journey shouldn't just end as developers but also making it easy for new developers to
The Networking/Tea Break
One big win for attending a developer meetup is that you get to meet the like minded people, people with more experience that you can learn from and you also get to share what you know with others, you can never know who you can bump into, it could be your next employer or your next partner.
Did we end there ?
Hell No!! The launch was just getting started, Our third speaker was a lady who has been reaching out to other ladies in Lusaka and trying to increase the presence of female developers , she is part Asikana Network and Co-lead of Facebook Developer Circle Lusaka known as @PythonKhaleesi she spoke on avoiding burnout as a developer, with great advice on how we can make time to do things that we actually like and how important communication.
Since this was the launch we couldn't end without mentioning about forloop itself, the origin how it started why we need to be part of it and also what's next, Remy Muhire did an awesome job explaining on forloop and answering questions that the audience had, these included on how forloop can help local software developers gain access to a global market. He also included why there was a need to start a developer community that would be independent and would also help bridge the gap between countries.
SCALING YOURSELF BY WRITING GOOD CODE. Remy
This was a very constructive topic on how we can scale ourselves by writing good code, the difference between clean and unreadable code which is always hard to maintain, he emphasized a lot on making code explain for itself without having unwanted comments and building on top of good code he mentioned briefly about build the right way and integrating the right tools in our development.
On behalf of forloop Africa, we appreciate everyone who took their time to come for the launch and those who made their effort in helping prepare the event, Our sponsors Bongohive and Alliance Francaise of Lusaka for the awesome venue, we hope to do more together and reach out to more people.
What's Next for forloop Zambia ?
We are planning to have more meetups and hackathons in the coming months, we are also looking into integrating Progate to engage more in those who are new to software development.
We will also keep trying as much as we can to get speakers from outside Zambia, we still have plans to have Prosper Otemuyiwa and Christian Nwamba at one of our meetups and we will sure do.
See you at the next meetup.
