Page 24 - Thetha Issue 6

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Culumanco Komanisi celebrates TANKS’ successes
with Mandela University Computing Sciences
Professor Jean Greyling.

“We believe this

is a solution from
Africa for Africa

and therefore our
dream is to take
coding into the

whole continent”

have been awarded high school
scholarships by AWS vice-president
and Mandela Uni alumnus David
Brown, with hopes of more sponsors
coming forward in future.
TANKS has notched up several
awards, including being one of 10
winners in the international Falling
Coding without computers Walls Science Breakthroughs of the
Year 2021. In 2019, it was chosen as
TANKS was developed in 2017 by Nelson Mandela University honours one of 60 global projects presented
student Byron Batteson: He wanted to find a solution to the country’s at UNESCO’s Mobile Learning Week
shortage of software developers by reaching children in disadvantaged in Paris, France.
communities with no access to computers.
Computing sciences professor Jean Greyling, Batteson’s supervisor, Changing the lives of
helped to make this vision a reality, by commercialising and rolling out unemployed youth
TANKS. Since then, RANGERS and BOATS have also been developed. Greyling and his team, with the
support of the Leva Foundation,
commercialising and rolling out these several countries. It was a project are equipping young adults to run
apps – to reach many more learners. made possible thanks to global coding workshops at schools across
“We have a much bigger dream sponsor Amazon Web Services (AWS) the country – and to assist in the
than South Africa. We believe this InCommunities, national sponsors competitions.
is a solution from Africa for Africa MiX Telematics and Transaction By the end of July, they had
and therefore our dream is to take Junction, Gqeberha sponsors S4 trained 130 “coding evangelists”.
coding into the whole continent, Integration and VSC Solutions, and “These are young unemployed
and in this way, reach millions of many others. people who showed an interest in
learners across Africa. That’s why we Even in the heavy lockdown days the project. They don’t need to have
recently rebranded the project as of COVID, with a few tweaks that saw a coding background – that’s the
‘Tangible Africa’.” the BOATS app moving from physical beauty of it,” Greyling said.
tokens to toggling commands on the Greyling and his team have also
Get with the programme phone, with scores emailed through, trained around 1500 teachers in
On Mandela Day, July 18, Greyling Greyling was able to run several South African and Namibia to run
got a little bit closer to that dream virtual tournaments. coding clubs in schools without
with a continent-wide RANGERS After lockdown eased, face-to- computer labs, and a further 600
competition – run under the banner face contests have also been run teachers through teacher unions,
“Coding 4 Mandela” – that reached successfully. who will in turn upskill an estimated
over 6000 kids in 45 sites across Some top-performing learners 20 000 educators countrywide.

24 | Thetha Edition 6 | 2022