Google Workshops in East Africa

A friend of mine (Michael Niyitegeka) at Makerere University mentioned this to me at dinner the other night but since Google made an official statement on their blog I figured it is now safe to disclose. Over the past few months, Google has become increasingly involved with East African students and universities. One of their projects was the ‘Google Gadget’ competition (which I’ve mentioned several times on this blog). Part of their visits included a trip to Makerere University here in Uganda where they held a workshop related to web development, toured the campuses and got to know local staff. They’ve conducted similar trips and workshops in other regions of Africa.

Ran Tavory of Google mentions what those sessions were like:

In each university we had a few technical lectures for the students as well as lab sessions in which they created small iGoogle web applications. In each place we discussed web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, RSS, PHP, JSP as well as some more advanced topics such as AJAX, Software as a Service and more. These technologies are useful not only for creating an iGoogle gadget, but for creating any real-world software application today. In that sense, we feel we have not only given computer science students a fair chance of winning the contest, but also a fair chance — and, we hope, an inspiration — to have careers as computer scientists and software engineers in the global software market.