Firstly at the time of writing this, if you view either Umuzi or the African Coding Network's website - it'll give you an stale and unappealing image these organisations.
It's also worth noting the are the same legal entity but two different wings or approaches to certain parts of the problem sphere.
Umuzi started out as a creative academy of sorts, a non-profit which started with photography for young, underprivileged kids in South Africa that needed opportunities to get marketable skills for economic upliftment. Then they added digital skills and things really took off. The organisation developed into a place to train young people, from zero to one, and get them into high value digital careers. These careers were often found by Umuzi ahead of the learners programme completion, by establishing contracts with large South African corporates in need of young, diverse digital talent pipelines.
The African Coding Network is a lower touch initiative, using Coursera and emails to boost learning activities and provide remote facilitation and support but to a much larger group of young people throughout Africa. Part of the plan here was to take the learnings from the higher touch group and apply them to the learners who were more remote. The team established exceptional relationships and partnered with UNICEF, with whom they still have numerous active projects which expand the goal to alleviate youth poverty.
I joined Umuzi in a short term contract after closing Brave Orbit, my software agency. Initially I was meant to provide additional support while a colleague was on maternity leave. I ended up staying for a year and a half and having one of the best professional experiences of my life. My role started out as programme manager and soon they established an executive committee, and requested that I join as Head of Programmes. The EXCO group include the CEO, co-founder as Chief Innovation Officer, Head of Finance and Head of Partnerships.
This organisation gave me the ability to be a founder within it. I was able to start many initiatives, build software, build programmes using the basis of my experience as a software developer to contribute to upskilling young people.
