Ghana Game Changers — Part 5: the 3rd week = Africa Code Week & Final Deliverables

Francois PLANCKART
SAP Social Sabbatical
8 min readOct 21, 2016

Here we go ! The famous 3rd week starts off, it’s basically our last full week to work on our deliverables before our final presentations which will take place the week after (on Wednesday & Friday). This week, we are also involved in the Africa Code Week to support teachers, and promote this event through conference press, radio & TV interviews as well as SAP interviews for global communications.

Africa Code Week founded by SAP and supported by DreamOval locally

Day #15: Flexible Day :)

Considering our involvement in the Africa Code Week sessions, we were supposed to work on our deliverables at the hotel the whole day, as the other afternoons will most likely be intended for ACW (Africa Code Week). But, we received a call from Francis requesting us to join the office to meet Ansophie, from SAP South Africa in charge of promoting SAP events and global communications. We met her and she asked us a few questions: why did you apply for this social sabbatical program ? What were your expectations in regards to Africa ? .. Basically, we shared our thoughts and individuals’ stories so that Ansophie could take notes. We were supposed to be filmed but we pushed it back a little bit to the day after, to be prepared :).

Key figures about Africa Code Week in Ghana

Africa Code Week: Founded and orchestrated by SAP in partnership with the Cape Town Science Centre and the Galway Education Centre, the Africa Code Week takes place from October 15th till October 23rd and is supported locally in Ghana by DreamOval Foundation. The objective of the ACW is to teach pupils to have fun using the Scratch programming language. The goal of ACW 2016 is to train over 150,000 youth in 30 African countries; Ghana aiming to reach over 50,000 via free coding workshops and online trainings offered to children in the Primary and Junior schools in the Greater Accra region.

Advertising through social media

Africa Code Week aims to foster digital literacy and equip the continent’s rising generation with job-relevant digital skills. Computer coding is the universal language for the 21st century. People who know how to code will be able to communicate across borders and cultures, be innovative, and solve problems more efficiently, with no barriers to impede their success. Learning programming at a young age helps children solve everyday problems and set themselves up for a lifetime of opportunities. It will certainly open the scope of the Ghanaian child’s thinking around creatively solving problems and challenges, transforming Ghana, as well as the continent, as we develop cutting edge solutions to meet the needs of Ghanaians and Africans.

Back to the hotel by 3 pm, we had to actively jump into our deliverables and start creating something concrete ! Andreas suggested a breakdown of tasks and an estimation of hours we would need to complete them, compared to our remaining number of hours. Very useful to make sure you don’t spend more time on it, otherwise it has to be reviewed. At the end of the day, we all had finished up our first task :), very positive !

Internal Brainstorming & Our work space (Pringles are mandatory ^^)

Day #16: ACW — Schools visits

Our morning was free, I mean no meetings or involvement in ACW. I started working at 8 till noon. Time to dress up with the nice ACW shirts, they are attractive and make everybody (teammates, waiters…) jealous ! I will definitely reuse this shirt regularly in France ! Francis called us and said I will team up with Keren, a Master trainer from SAP and an officer from Ghana Education Service. Unfortunately, that was the first time Sahar Andreas and I got split up !!

The DreamTeam ready to visit schools :)
Great teacher making connections between what they see and what they can create with coding
Smiling kids
Those 2 kids did ignore my presence because they were EXTREMELY fascinated by the game they were creating #love
Helping pupils
So much hugs, smiles, handshakes & happiness
Hugs, smiles, handshakes ..
Keren from DreamOval and Solomon from SAP Kenya

Day #17: Interviews & Schools visits with the VP’s wife and the French HR Director

What a crazy and amazing today ! This morning, we shared an overall picture of our deliverables to get Francis’ feedback whether we’re on track or noit. Looks good, even “impressive” I quote ;).

We have been interviewed by the Head of Integrated Communications from SAP Africa: Ansophie. We were not used to speak in front of a camera but we had to in order to share our experience !! We knew what to say but when the recording starts, your speech is gone ahah. That was a funny moment ! Let’s see the result but I would most likely hate watching me ahah ! Besides that, what about our deliverables ? I’m still a bit pessimistic because I would love to find time to work more but it’s challenging ..

Lunch at the hotel and our taxi driver picked us up and drived to the Vice President’s wife place. I met the French HR director there as well. Time for some shots and let’s go and be part of THE convoy !! A police officer was in front of our 6–8 cars and facilitated the traffic for us. That was so cool to feel being part of a FBI convoy or whatever ;). Red lights = I don’t care :) !

Nice welcome

We visited 3 schools in Accra. Pupils were so excited and welcomed us in a such amazing manner ! Some kids sang, danced, played music, or lined up in to welcome us (mainly the Vice President’s wife of course). That was awesome and impressive ! We all got a lot of hugs, handshakes or “hi”.

Ghana Television
VP’s wife telling pupils to work hard :)
Cute cute cute :)
Master Trainers, Head of HR (Valérie Vezinet), Head of Integrated Communications (Ansophie) and us
Showcasing

Day #18: Productive day at the hotel

There is not so much to say about today. We had a productive day without meetings and we moved forward with our deliverables and presentation. It is still tough to judge how much you should work on some items, but Andreas is very good at providing us guidance ;)

Lunch Break outside the hotel, in the Nigerian restaurant: I’ve heard that most of the meals served there were hot, spicy so I decided to be cautious: chicken and fried plantain so that I was sure it would not be spicy at all ! Bingo, it wasn’t after I took the little green pieces of pepper away.

Back to work, we discussed and shared our individual progress. It took some time because we shared our opinions again and provides feedback. Then, we were kicked out of the room at 5:30 pm because of a celebration. The thing is someone had informed us that there will be a celebration and asked us to leave the room by 6, but it turned out that they had changed their plan… Be flexible !

Diner in the hotel for a few of us, the others went to Kona, the best local place ever on Thursdays :). I opened a bottle of French white wine and as usual, Sahar and I were not very hungry so we shared the Funghi pizza. And finale, we ordered the cheesecake

Day #19: ACW Press conference

We made progress on our slides deck and deliverables on Friday morning. I can’t realize that this 3rd and last full week of work is about to end up. Time flies !!!!!!

Quick lunch at the hotel and Kobe picked us up: direction the school we’ve been before. The press conference was supposed to start at 3 pm and we arrived by 3.45 pm.. and guess what ? the press conference had not begun yet ahah. We had to wait for ghanaian television.

Francis talking about the future of Africa Code Week in Ghana

We had the pleasure of listening to speeches by the Metro Director of Accra, a representative from the school, an officer from Ghana Education Service, the French Director of HR, Francis from DreamOval. I really enjoyed what was said: they demonstrated their passion and motivation to improve people’s lives, mainly the ghanaian children since they are the future of the nation.

Keren admirating Sahar’s hair

Friday Night: we went out to the Gold Coast, a nice restaurant with live music. First thing I noticed was the “SlidePay” sticker on the door entrance so I guessed that DreamOval is used to hang out there. We had fun and joked as usual. The co-founders joined us later. The live music was cool !!

A week-end packed with community service, shopping, relaxing moments as well as hard work is ahead of us ! The countdown to go back home is running, D-7 :/

STAY TUNED.

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