10 years old Ethiopian Soliyana Gizaw wins 2020 African Code Challenge

Addis Ababa, January 27, 2021 (FBC) – The 10 years old Ethiopian Soliyana Gizaw has been named the winner of the 2020 African Code Challenge (AfriCAN Code), a newly launched continent-wide tech competition where young people were invited to create an educational computer game.

According to organizers Soliyana’s submission called “Mathstainement” won the Pan-African prize leading participants from 54 countries.

“After a rigorous round of judging for this year’s AfriCAN Code Challenge, SAP Africa Code Week’s top 10 winners were announced and special highlights include the top 3 being all-female, aged 10 – 16 years, with Soliyana, 10 years old from Ethiopia as the Pan-African winner of the competition,” the press release stated.

Africa Code Week’s Global Coordinator Olajide Ademola Ajayi said: “Despite the COVID disruption for schools which impacted hundreds of millions of youth across Africa, children from more than 54 countries stepped-up to share their vision of the future of education.”

The announcement notes that “the AfriCAN Code Challenge is a pan-African coding competition where youth aged 8 – 16 were tasked with coding a game using the Scratch programming language to answer the question: “How will your tech change the future of education?”

In her video presentation Soliyana explains that her app “is not only a game,” but also “creates awareness about COVID-19.”