Code in Hausa, or in your native language

3 min readJan 24, 2020

Cliquez ici pour lire la version en français.

I’d like to introduce Mohamed Thiam, a young Senegalese man with a passion for computers, who designed Zuri, an intelligent drone that he flies by voice commands.

Mohamed Thiam, illustrates the future of technology in Africa with the use of voice and artificial intelligence. Soon voice interfaces in your local languages to facilitate your daily life, public services, transport, connected homes, etc…

The best way to predict the future is to create it. Peter Drucker

Let’s train our future talents from childhood

Today young talent are moulded all over the world from the age of six, thanks to the work of the MIT Media Lab, which launched Scratch, a visual programming language with building blocks for children.

Scratch is translated into several languages, such as English, French, Maori, etc… more than 50 languages, but no African languages.

Educational research suggests that learning in a local language can have a positive impact on learning outcomes.

Coding in a local language accelerates learning

A 2017 study of five countries and more than 15,000 Scratch users at the University of Washington by Benjamin Mako Hill; shows that novice users who code with their local language programming blocks and their localized environment in the main language of their home country demonstrate new programming concepts at a faster rate than users in the same countries with English interfaces.

scratch workshop at Centre de Recherche et d’Essais de Thies (CRE THIES)

The customization of the blocks in local language or in the vernacular language, makes for a fast, engaged and more involving learning, allowing the child to concentrate on his creation without fear of the language barrier.