Teaching Data Skills in Africa: A Conversation with Angelique van Rensburg
Speak of passion for digital equity and one person that easily comes to my mind is Angelique van Rensburg. Angelique started working with The Carpentries as Regional Consultant for Southern Africa at the tail end of November 2019. With a background in psychology, her trajectory into the programmatic data space is a unique one.
In this interview, Angelique shares her perspective of the African digital landscape and sheds some light on what the Africa Data Carpentries team is doing to make the landscape as reasonably levelled as possible.
How Did You Learn To Code?
I was pursuing my doctorate degree in Educational Psychology at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa, using SPSS for my statistical analysis. At a point, I realised I needed something stronger to equip me with the kind of specificity I needed for my research. I rummaged YouTube and LinkedIn for tutorials and courses — those got my feet wet. I later joined Optentia, a research centre in the school that brought in professors from different parts of the world to provide statistical skills training.
It made sense then to travel abroad to learn statistics, but it was surely going to be an expensive option for me, let alone the passport and visa complications that come with travelling to most of the countries with these resources.
How then would I be able to gain high-level statistical programming skills without travelling abroad? That was when I was introduced to the Carpentries. I went through their training sessions, became an Instructor and soon enough, I was teaching groups of people how to code in R. I learned a lot through teaching — it sure wasn’t an easy road, but it has yielded the desired results.
How Can The Perceived Exclusivity Of Coding Be Changed In Africa?
The idea that learning to code is exclusive for a select few is something we need to work on. I think the problem needs to be tackled from the root. At the root of our educational systems, math and science are made to be intimidating, especially for young women. Those subjects are foundational to all computer programing and need to be made as interesting, attractive and practical as possible.
At the Carpentries, we are aware of this background, so we start from scratch, building upon the basics to get the trainees to a point where they are able to help themselves. We make the sessions participatory and as supportive as possible, especially during the live coding sessions. The sessions do take some time, but we have worked hard to ensure we are not overloading the trainees with information by taking breaks and increasing interactivity.
Tell Us More About How The Carpentries Is Working To Solve This Problem.
We know there is a big gap on the continent, but we have a plan to bridge it. We are growing the Carpentries network across Southern Africa at the moment, and moving soon to cover the entire continent. As a non-profit, we have passionate volunteer instructors who commit their time to fill the gap through the workshops we run.
We had some funding to travel to a couple of countries in Africa to run some workshops this year, but those plans were cancelled due to the pandemic. However, that afforded us the opportunity to reach more people when we moved our workshops online. We worked to provide mobile data for individuals who needed that to be able to join the workshops. Even though the pandemic has left us crippled, we have trained an average of 70 learners from the 9 workshops we have organized. You can count that as one of the silver linings in the dying situation we are facing.
With Your Background In Working With Youth At Risk, How Do You Hope To Empower Them With The Digital Skills They Need To Succeed?
My research work with youth at risk had a lot to do with understanding their dimensions of resilience — why some young people do well even when they face severe adversities e.g. poverty, violence, abuse e.t.c. I am using that background to build a systematic literature review for teaching programming in Africa, exploring the factors that hinder digital equity and inclusivity on the continent.
We are asking young academics and young students to do ground-breaking research that is Africa focused, paying close attention to cultural differences, educational inequalities, female exclusion and learning difficulties among others. The goal is to make this as open and inclusive as possible, to build the digital strength of the continent by employing solutions from the continent.
The Carpentries is passionate about empowering young people — at the moment we have some determined researchers in Ethiopia and Kenya working to grow the community there. My main aim is to equip these volunteers to be able to self organize workshops and conduct research so that the work gets sustainable by virtue of it being open. I try to support as much as I can by making resources available to them, be it a GitHub template or an online instance of R datasets.
Can You Share An Impact Story From The Work Of The Carpentries In Africa So Far?
We have an instructor from Kenya who has just really blossomed this year. This individual attended some of our workshops, started volunteering, and quickly stepped into the role of an instructor — this is now very uncommon, given it all happened in a couple of months.
This person has become really great at online instruction. On one occasion, the Internet connection was bad for the scheduled instructor during a workshop and this individual was able to step in and teach the online class. Stories like this simply bring smiles to my face.
Does The Carpentries Have A Representation In The West Africa Sub-region?
I am aware of one Nigerian Carpentries instructor at the moment. As it stands now, the majority of our presence outside Southern Africa has been in East Africa. But we collaborate with the West And Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) on some of their efforts in West Africa.
Not too long ago, WACREN taught about 200 women across West Africa how to create with Raspberry Pi. They were aiming to replicate the Python project on the Raspberry Pi over to R this year, but that was disrupted in some ways by the pandemic.
WACREN is working to build the digital capacity of women in West Africa, and in some of their sessions, they use the Carpentries lessons as foundations. It is an interesting intersection, and I am excited to be a part of that.
Any Final Words?
This is the first year the Carpentries is having a regional supporter in Africa, and I am thrilled to be filling this role. I am not a programmer by trade — I am a registered counsellor with a strong passion to equip all people, especially young people, with digital statistical skills. My background in the social sciences makes me observe the digital world with a slightly different lens.
If you are reading this, make it an effort to join one of the Africa Carpentries Monthly Calls — just sign up on the Etherpad. We have open arms and we want everyone to come. Join the call to learn new skills, brainstorm with other minds, and network with passionate digital advocates from across the continent.
The proverbial African saying goes this way — “It takes a village to raise a child.” In that same vein, it would take the entire continent to raise a digitally equipped generation.
Nominate Someone For Me To Interview
Kafayat Adeoye and Dr Margareth Gfrerer who have some of their works intersecting with WACREN.
