Abuja startup training children robotics, coding for free  

WeCodeKC offers educational training and mentorship to help Black and brown students from low-income neighborhoods break into the tech industry. Participants can learn different programming languages, build their own robots, work on cybersecurity projects, get help with internship and job searches, and more.

Police in Ensenada, Mexico, have been using drones since October 2017 and it has led to more than 500 arrests and a 10 percent drop in crime. The drones have fostered faster response times and help police decide how to allocate resources appropriately, while highlighting risks before officers approach a property. Officials in Chula Vista, Calif., are working with the same drone company to start a similar program, which could prompt changes in federal policies on using drones in the U.S.

Michigan is becoming a leader in the field of autonomous vehicles. Fifteen colleges and universities across the state have joined in an academic consortium to ensure students entering the workforce will have the necessary skills to advance mobility technology. Competitions in vehicle development and robotics are equipping students to become leaders in the field.

Bloom Innovations or Bloom4STEM aims to inspire youth — particularly girls aged six to 15 — to pursue STEM education and careers to combat the shortage of female tech professionals in the area. Bloom4STEM visits local schools to introduce coding to students and teach them about web development, robotics and mobile app creation and also hosts mentoring sessions to help foster collaboration and personal and educational growth.

BitLab Innovation Hub offers a STEM program geared at out-of-school children, which provides hands-on training to prepare them for careers in technology. The school has trained 105 children so far.

Code Plateau is a fellowship designed to teach young adults digital skills like digital marketing, software engineering, and data science to help them secure good jobs and help the country into a leading digital economy. Since the fellowship began in 2019, it has trained over 1,000 people.

Reach Out to Girls (ROG) works to inspire girls, particularly those in rural areas, to embrace STEM, through mentoring programs and training. Through ROG, professional women in STEM fields serve as mentors and, so far, ROG’s programs have directly benefited more than 200 girls.

To make internet connectivity accessible and affordable across Africa, Dr. Harold Omondi developed “internet from the moon,” a technology that uses satellite dishes to communicate with transponders placed in the moon several years ago by NASA. The transponders can send and receive information and, since the moon keeps the same side of its surface pointed towards earth, the connection cannot be lost. Still in the piloting phase, the system currently offers free internet at Jomo Kenyatta University, where over 1,200 people login every day, and has another station in South Sudan serving 300-500 people daily.

The "maker" movement is a growing trend in education that allows students to learn in a creative, hands-on, project-based way that develops an idea in real time using tools and technology. The annual Maker Faire in Queens brings together people who utilize this strategy in the classroom, and educators testify to how it is getting students engaged in a way they hadn't before.

Deaf Technology Foundation offers weekly activities to train Deaf students in programming, robotics, and other computer science skills. The sessions, which are taught using sign language, have served roughly 1,600 students so far.