Code Queen

Uganda has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world due to lack of high quality training/experience and structural issues related to the local market. Females are twice as likely to be unemployed compared to males. This figure is even higher when it comes to male dominated sectors such as ICT, the world’s fastest growing sector.

Code Queen provides experiential training in coding and workplace skills to young Ugandan women seeking employment. We are creating a safe space, a community of women helping women, which is shifting mindsets and getting women excited about ICT. We link successful graduates to employment opportunities in the growing global ICT market. We have developed an ecosystem of partners to deliver this solution.

At scale, this solution reduces the high youth unemployment rates in Sub Saharan Africa by meeting global demand of ICT skills and more equitable distribution of opportunities using technology. 

In Uganda, approx. 80% of the population is under the age of 30, and more than 80% of them are unemployed (World Bank) – one of the highest in Africa. We estimate that youth unemployment costs Uganda roughly $15million per year.  The true societal cost is much higher when unemployment is expressed as unrest, female disempowerment and an increasingly despairing young population. Speaking to local employers, we found that:

• 8/10 felt that entry level graduates didn’t have the required skills and attitude for the jobs and prefer to hire fewer, but more experienced staff.
• Structurally there are not enough jobs in the economy

Female youth are twice as likely to be unemployed compared to male youth. This is even more acute in male dominated areas such as ICT. Girls are 5 times less likely to consider a career in technology versus boys (Plan International). Speaking to students, we found that 9/10 times it was due to lack of confidence as opposed to lower qualifications or experience.

This is also reflected globally: even established tech giants such as Facebook (19%), Google (20%), Apple (23%), Microsoft (19%) and Twitter (17%) are struggling to employ women (Financial Times)

Code Queen is a free intensive bootcamp combining coding and workplace skills development. It connects graduates with partners for further training/work opportunities.

It is experiential – it is developed with local businesses and taught by volunteer software engineers (including alumni). It ends with a hackathon solving a real challenge faced by a local business e.g. Safe Boda

It opens up local/global opportunities - Software engineering is now the world’s most in-demand profession and there is an acute global shortage of talent (Michael Page). We match global demand to a supply of well-trained talent in Uganda, transcending local structural issues. Uganda is well- positioned given it is an English speaking country with favorable time zones.

It creates a safe space and focuses on mindset – 9/10 of our beneficiaries felt that “women only” bootcamps created a space where they could build confidence to ask questions. Specific modules on mindset, alumni engagement and a ‘Women in Tech’ webinar series helps validate their chosen path

It is scalable – we are working with volunteers and partners that provide free resources and reduces our capex. We are further digitalising our training and working with a partner to launch a tech platform for linking

We care most about impacting the lives of young women aged 16 to 30 years. Most of them are unemployed although there are also some looking to upskill. Currently operational in Kampala but planning to scale to rural/conflict areas such as Gulu & Mbarara. We spoke to many young women before designing this program and use regular feedback to implement improvements e.g. flexibility to cater to childcare needs, meals, adding in experiential and employer linking elements.

We linked 80% of our first cohort to jobs, internships and scholarships. Code Queen students have gone on to work internationally e.g. Tata in India and locally at Trustful Trade, Kanzu Code and Laboremus. As an example, our student who is working for Tata in India was previously earning less than $5 a day through the informal sector and now her starting salary is multiples of that. 

Typically the path has been to move on to an advanced program followed by jobs placement but less technical jobs have been filled without further training. Graduates have also come back to volunteer as facilitators for new cohorts. We are hosting regular alumni to grow and nurture this supportive peer led community.

This is a women’s only coding & workplace skills program for 16-30 year old Ugandans specifically designed to level the playing field in the male-dominated ICT space. It is highly experiential and we have collaborated with businesses, software engineers and beneficiaries to make it a life-changing milestone event for our graduates. Our solution is not a piece of technology but a programme designed to redistribute opportunity to talented women in a forgotten part of the world. We then actively connect our talent to further training opportunities, and paid jobs, using a technology platform to do this at scale.

There are a number of youth-skilling programs in Uganda, including those that focus on coding. What makes our program different is:

• We’ve lowered the barriers to entry by providing a free course for complete beginners that also has built in flexibility required by our students (e.g. household and child care responsibilities)
• We’ve created an ecosystem of partners that collaborate through proven governance structures – providing high quality, relevant training and linking opportunities following graduation. 
• We’re building momentum through a community of women helping women – giving them the confidence to break through the largest male dominated job market in the world
• We consulted local businesses when designing this course to make it work place relevant:
  • We have partnered with world class European coding school Le Wagon that is helping us to design & deliver a high quality curriculum and also deliver teacher training to our alumni who come back as facilitators
  • We provide exposure to local businesses to prepare students for career readiness e.g. through our hackathon, and CV & interview workshops

Our "competitors" are our partners and we are here to collaborate and build the ecosystem together. For example, Refactory run a more intense, advanced coding program, but the number of women applying is low due to the high barriers to entry. Our program has resulted in enrollment in their program jumping up to 75% by our alumni. 

Our model brings together an ecosystem of partners to solve the issue of female youth unemployment. We use a variety of existing technology:

• Content for training (HTML/CSS/Javascript/APIs)
• Delivery of training (zoom, slack, whatsapp, email etc)
• Scaling – automating parts of the training (for COVID we had to be pivot to deliver 100% remotely) & launching a linking platform with one of our partners

Our solution is not a piece of technology but a program to teach women how to build it. We believe that the human element is required at the beginning to help bridge one of the biggest initial barriers: mindset.

We believe that social entrepreneurship is becoming less about single product solutions and more about changing the system through collaboration. We have managed to build a range of successful partnerships to create a successful ecosystem that trains and links young women. We've linked 80% of our first cohort to jobs, internships and scholarships. We have students who have gone on to work internationally e.g. Tata in India and locally at Trustful Trade, Kanzu Code and Laboremus. You can also see testimonials from some of our students in this video. Now that we have tested our model we are ready to scale.

In 2019 we ran the pilot where 16 out of 19 women graduated and over 80% of them are now either employed or going through advanced training to become software engineers. 

We ran our second cohort in March 2020 with a total of 40 girls and despite COVID-19, our second cohort showed agility and commitment as we moved to a 100% remote online course.  19 women graduated in May 2020. By the end of this year we hope to have trained 200 women.

Within 5 years we are looking to scale our solution across East Africa to reach 1 million young women, with at least 60% graduating and going into ICT related careers. We will do this by:

1. Forming partnerships at locations where we can run this course - eg start up hubs, universities
2. Train volunteers proficient in code how to teach our curriculum (including alumni, software engineers from corporate partners)
3.  Place graduates through an online linking platform connecting our partners and alumni

The most limiting factor currently is our capacity. This is a necessary investment to scale without compromising on quality since the depth of impact & long term outcomes (i.e. % women employed) is just as important as the short term output (i.e number of women we train, % women proficient in code). Our ultimate goal is to reduce poverty and gender injustice by reducing female youth unemployment - contributing to a world where there is an equal distribution of opportunities. 

As a priority, we are currently looking to recruit someone for business development and need the funding to be able to do so. This person will be responsible for developing relationships with corporates. As we scale we will need access to more hiring partners since our mission doesn’t end at the training stage. We are confident that the interest and demand is there but need to invest the time to scope for & build more partnerships.

2 full time staff

9 part time staff

Code Queen is essentially an ecosystem of partners that have come together to bridge the gap that currently exists in training young women and connecting them up with employers. This includes coding schools, software engineers, a start-up hub, headhunters, corporates as well as our alumni. Partners collaborate and leverage their expertise through governance structures that are set up for scaling and continuous improvement. It is driven by Educating The Children (ETC), a UK registered charity set up 10 years ago to empower young women in East Africa through education and training. ETC already has a track record of solving problems for communities – in the Masai Mara in Kenya it built the first secondary school for girls in a region that had 47 primary schools and no secondary schools. It is a public/private partnership and houses over 400 girls protecting them from FGM, child marriage and hard labour. In 2019 we saw the first generation of Masai girls graduate and 100% of them have transitioned on to higher education.

The Board and its strong team of staff and volunteers across UK, Kenya and Uganda has over 50+ years of corporate, education & tech experience, including new business development and scaling through partnerships in Africa. 

The Innovation Village (TIV) 

TIV a local start up community in Kampala, that houses 70 early stage start-ups and 50 larger corporates. TIV provide us with the logistical support and required infrastructure (rooms, facilities, laptops if required).

Andela 

We recruited a number of facilitators and teaching assistants (who supported the lead facilitators) through Andela.

Le Wagon

Le Wagon is one of Europe’s leading coding schools that offers students an intensive 9-week coding bootcamp. Le Wagon is working with ETC to enhance the curriculum and delivery. Through enhancements to curriculum and program delivery, sharing best practises – this includes all the strategic advice & model related to how they get their own graduates employment

CEMM Group Uganda

CEMM is a corporate training & consulting company who specialize in training and human capital development. They worked with us to deliver mindset training based on Franklin Covey’s “7 habits of highly effective people”. They work with a number of high profile businesses in Kampala to deliver corporate training programs. 

Blue Node Media 

An IT firm that helps us to scale and also deliver part of our linking agenda through digitalising elements of our training and bringing our partner network on to a newly developed freelancer platform.

Other partners include Refactory (advanced training in software development), NFT (head hunter), AIESEC (youth organisation) and local businesses (Prudential Uganda, Safe Boda, Fenix International, True African) as well as start ups.

Code Queen's success is dependent on collaboration and partnerships. We’re excited about meeting organisations who are doing similar work in other parts of the world to exchange learnings, advice and support. We'd particularly like to learn about various curriculums, modes of delivery and volunteer management that would help us to scale. We would also like to meet global corporates that we could link with our alumni - job placements are vital for our long term impact. Also, given our resourcing requirements to meet our scaling goals, Solve's connections will be invaluable to ensuring access to a broader pool of technical/financial/strategic resources. 

We are planning to expand our program to conflict zones in Northern Uganda (Gulu) where a large proportion of the beneficiaries would be refugees. We will leverage our existing resources and use the funding specifically for hiring local talent to implement the program in that region.

Code Queen equips young unemployed women in Uganda with coding and workplace skills, supported by a community of tech volunteers. We work with local business to simulate real-life work environments and challenges to help our graduates gain access to the otherwise inaccessible global technology job market. 

We need funds in order to hire local staff that help us to scale the program through delivery of training, alumni management and expanding our post training partner network

Code Queen equips young unemployed women in Uganda with coding and workplace skills, supported by a community of tech volunteers. We work with local business to simulate real-life work environments and challenges to help our graduates gain access to the otherwise inaccessible global technology job market. 

We need funds in order to hire local staff that help us to scale the program through delivery of training, alumni management and expanding our post training partner network