Jackson Tshabalala knew from a young age that he was going to be a change maker. And while the road to becoming a 29-year-old Operations Manager of an award-winning innovation development organisation was not without its challenges, it prepared him for his role in shaping young people’s futures across the continent.
In just over a year, at the helm of Tangible Africa, an engagement project of the Nelson Mandela University Computing Sciences Department and the Leva Foundation, Tshabalala has travelled across South Africa and Africa to build teams of people who teach coding concepts to primary and high school learners.
"I was the first official employee of Tangible Africa in October 2021, and we started off with just a few schools in Gqeberha. The programme has grown so much that we now have regional coordinators across all the provinces in South Africa, five full-time staff members working at our head office in Gqeberha, and, with the support of our sponsors, we have employed between 150 to 200 people in internships and part-time income projects.”
Tangible Africa has to date reached over 100 000 learners, trained 20 000 teachers, as well as hosted coding tournaments nationwide, in more than seven other African countries, as well as hosted an international coding tournament between South African and Irish learners.
What makes this award-winning organisation so novel is the innovative way in which very little online resources are used to introduce technology to learners and teachers through offline coding apps, which were developed by Nelson Mandela University alumni.
It is no surprise that the huge success achieved in such a short amount of time has earned Tangible Africa some high accolades. In November last year the organisation was announced the first runner up in the African Union Innovating Education in Africa 2022 Awards.
“I got this incredible opportunity to pitch Tangible Africa to the AU in Tunisia, we met so many new partners during the awards event whom we are now further collaborating with to spread unplugged coding to places like West and East Africa. Tangible Africa has accelerated my personal development, innate leadership skills and I have grown operationally, organizationally, and relationally in the professional sphere,” said Tshabalala.
Getting to this epitome of success took some incredible mentors, per-chance-meetings as well as hardships along the way to position Tshabalala for the prestige and responsibility of his leading role at Tangible Africa. Born and raised in Gqeberha, there was a time in his younger years where he admits to just coasting through life.
“I was the top student and head boy in primary school but when I got to high school, my family went through a terrible financial situation. From Grade 9 until I finished school, we hardly had any money. I stopped caring about school, lost all ambition, and just coasted through.”
However, the 7-year-old boy who wanted a computer instead of a PlayStation and told his father that Bill Gates would one day work for him at 9-years of age, was definitely still a part of Jackson Tshabalala’s DNA and he decided to “get his act together” in Grade 11.
“Fast forward, I finished high school as a prefect, soccer captain, house-captain, and debate president. This earned me a bursary through my mom’s work to study towards a BA in Industrial Psychology and English at Nelson Mandela University,” said Tshabalala.
After university, he experienced bouts of unemployment and started several businesses and other ventures, until a shift came in 2019 when, during time spent in Johannesburg, he realised he wanted to dedicate his life to an awareness campaign in township communities about 4IR.
After three short years of planning and meeting the right people, partners and mentors along the way, he found his match in Tangible Africa’s tangible coding initiative and is now spearheading coding awareness projects across Africa.
“We plan to do this by building capacity in other organisations to be sustainable and expand the project across the continent. We want to get coding into every country in Africa to bridge the digital divide and unlock opportunities for previously disadvantages communities by upskilling them with resources and information for an African context.”
His personal goal is to contribute to an advanced Africa - a first world Africa - and a continent that creates its own solutions.
“Coding is an introduction to digital education, and even when all schools in Africa have computers, the learners will still need problem solving skills to develop the continent. I believe that I have a crucial role to play in the development of the African continent. My time is now.”
