Episode 22: Teaching the Future Open Source Programmers with Ibiam Chihurumnaya

Sponsored By:
Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest Ibiam Chihurumnaya (https://twitter.com/iam_ibiam) Sugar Labs
Show Notes 00:55 In today’s episode, we have Ibiam Chihurumnaya. He
is a developer based in Nigeria. Ibiam works with Sugar Labs where
he develops and maintains software for children. Also, as a way of
giving back to society, he trains children how to code. So far,
they have trained over 800 children. He is here to share with us
how he started his programming journey and the wonderful things he
is doing for future programmers. Imagine growing up in a village
where every child is expected to either be a lawyer, an engineer or
a doctor and anything to do with technology is unheard off. Can you
imagine depending on a cyber café for you to learn how to code? Our
guest narrates to us how he overcame all that he went through for
him to become the great developer he is today. 07:10 How did he
start coding? Ibiam was fortunate enough to attend a school that
offered coding training. He was lucky enough to grab a chance to
attend some of the training, and it created a base for his coding
passion. 10:10 The laptop he was using at that time had limited RAM
and hard disk space; therefore, he resulted in learning Python. It
was not a walk in the park. He had to sacrifice to afford cyber
services. For parents who are listening, it is good for you to
allow your children to choose what they want to do. Ibiam’s mother
supported him to the best of her ability. Our guest started the
FOSSFA movement. 15:30 He drew inspiration from a developer in
Uruguay who teaches coding as an extra-curricular activity to
children between the age of nine and twelve who are interested in
coding. The results in Uruguay are amazing. When Ibiam started
teaching kids programming in Nigeria, it was not easy for him but
the desire to see people who will carry on the coding work once he
is not there kept him going. He teaches open-source. 21:09 Ibiam is
working with the Nigerian government to help teach the interested
children coding as an extra-curricular activity along with other
activities like robotics, design and drones classes. The foundation
encourages children to be whatever they want to be without
necessarily choosing a career in the technology world. 33:06 In
Africa, Rwanda is doing an exceptionally good job in encouraging
the children to love coding. In the next 10 to 20 years, Ibiam sees
Africa as a tech space with collaboration and innovations. Also, he
wants to see a lot of engineers in Africa from Africa, still in
Africa and working with companies in Africa and outside Africa.
Spotlights Ibiam Chihurumnaya - Delta
(https://github.com/dandavison/delta) Justin Dorfman Sketch CSV
Mail Merge (https://github.com/jdwolk/sketch-csv-mailmerge) Richard
Littauer - Semantic Release
(https://github.com/semantic-release/semantic-release) Eric Berry -
RestForce (https://github.com/restforce/restforce) Links 
Python (https://www.python.org/) Listen to How The Python Software
Foundation Works (https://sustain.codefund.fm/18) Sugar Labs
(https://sugarlabs.org/) FOSSFA (http://www.fossfa.net/) OLPC
(http://one.laptop.org/) Ibiam on Twitter
(https://twitter.com/iam_ibiam) Sponsored By Linode -
https://linode.com/sustain/ Special Guest: Ibiam Chihurumnaya.