Software development training academy WeThinkCode says it has placed 48% of its 360 students into roles in the professional services industry since January.
Matchmaking and interviews for remaining students is ongoing with employer partners, it notes.
These are students that form part of WeThinkCode’s elective pilot programme, introduced in collaboration with the Dutch Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
GIZ, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, together with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, last year partnered with WeThinkCode to pilot three elective programmes.
The targeted students enrolled in WeThinkCode’s 12-month systems development training programme, according to the academy.
The electives – quality assurance, system integration and mobile development – are introduced in the final four months of the programme after students have completed the 12 months of training to develop their coding skills.
Through the programme, the journey of 360 students was monitored, tracking their performance and progress in these electives. Overall, 97% of students monitored in the pilot programme successfully completed the elective training.
“Each elective trains students to use tools specific to their specialised area, expanding their tech stack and positioning themselves well to join organisations using similar tech stacks. This makes matching them to partners looking for specific technical skills much easier,” says Kelebogile Motlhamme, placements manager at WeThinkCode.
Sethu Komani, WeThinkCode COO, indicates the GIZ collaboration aims to place 80% of the students into internships before August, with a 91% permanent placement post-graduation.
The pilot programme is to differentiate WeThinkCode graduates within the labour market and upskill them further to access opportunities.
WeThinkCode was launched locally in 2015 and welcomed its first coding students in May 2016. It seeks to eliminate the digital skills shortage by developing 100 000 coders in Africa over the next 10 years.