The Namibia <Developers/> Summit in a Nutshell
The Namibia Developers Summit is an initiative by Developers Circles Windhoek from Facebook that took place on the 17th of November 2018. The aim of the summit was to bring local developers together to discuss the latest technologies, connect and share ideas on how to strengthen the local tech ecosystem. This inaugural summit brought together 80+ developers and startup co-founders; with 7 plenary sessions and 2 panel discussions, covering diverse topics from front-end development to augmented reality.
One of the remarkable talks came from Ally Angula a Namibian Entrepreneur and an ‘Economic hero’ as she calls herself. Her talk was very interesting as it highlighted her struggles when she started Leap Holdings (Pty) Ltd. She narrated a situation where she took money from her agricultural business to fund her retail business which forced the agricultural business to shutdown.
Ally also emphasized the need for developers to create local software/applications, and subsequently enterprises in form of startups that can attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Namibia.
Tersia Gowases “Usability Engineer” who is an IT executive at the Namibia Statistics Agency and an UI/Front-End development expert delivered a talk on front-end development. Her talk focused on VueJS, a web development framework aimed at enhancing and making web applications easier to develop and great to interact with for the end-user.
She pointed out the lightweight, flexible, modular and highly performant nature of VueJS as distinctive characteristics that enable VueJS to be different from other frameworks such as AngularJS and React. As a light framework, VueJS borrows its ease of use from AngularJS and the Virtual DOM from React. It can be embedded into existing code to enhance interactivity and comes pre-configured with the laravel framework for the Laravel framework lovers and those who hate configuring stuff.
The panel discussion of women coders made its mark by emphasizing that programming should not be a career path by coincidence but rather by choice as it requires passion and one of the only ways this can be achieved is by giving children exposure to computer studies, particularly programming in the earlier stages of their lives, which is basically from primary school.
One of the most important questions tackled by the panelists was “how do we get more women and girls in Tech/ make them code?”. Most of panelists agreed that to engage girls and women, we need to go to them and approach them with the activities that they enjoy doing and incorporate those activities with coding . A case was shared of how an annual robotics meetup added robotic barbies to their lineup and saw a large number of girls showing interest in robotics. Another burning topic that came up, was that the under representation of women in tech field was mainly due discrimination element. One panelist stated that she is fortunate that she has never in her lifetime experienced discrimination as a women in tech but noted that she has heard from friends who have experienced it. Another added that she has mostly faced it when attending interviews for Developer/Programmer positions and panelists would usually ask her questions related to whether she can really code and to this she advises growing thick skin and not letting instances of “ignorance” deter her from her goals.
Another panel that consisted of Namibian Entrepreneurs shared their breakthroughs as entrepreneurs and what stood out was when one of the panelists who self funded their business now know as IMarketing had to take a risk and sell their car while still under bank finance, and chose to keep it a secret from the bank. Today IMarketing is one of the most successful ICT consulting companies in Namibia.
Augmented Reality has been a hot topic in the innovation space. An AR Masterclass showcased how AR can be applied in the classroom to enhance the learning experience and give learners a virtual feeling and demonstration of how Astronomy works.
Rafael Puente a Professor at the University of Namibia presented some of the work that is being done with the assistance of AR especially in the domain of game development. There are three uses of AR either to add virtual objects, make enhancements to objects and to add information. He also gave a brief overview of ARkit and ArCore, emphasizing that the former only works of IOS while the latter works on both Android and IOS.
Berhane Wheeler a grade 8 high school scholar at the time of writing has been making wonders within the software development ecosystem in Namibia, this time around he developed an application in its infant stages that can be used in chemistry classes as a way to curb the lack of resources for scholars to experiment with chemicals. The application can be used to model chemical reactions without the need to have the actual chemicals and equipment around. The app also gives a detailed description of the reaction and the different gasses that are emitted due the chemical reaction. He stated that he wishes to finish the app and take it to school in Namibia and Africa as a whole.
Is the Namibian Tech Ecosystem headed the right direction? From this summit quit a lot has been brought forward by the audience as a way to ensure that this ecosystem is headed in the same direction with the rest of the global tech ecosystem. One of the ways is to encourage programming to be introduced at primary school level and not at high school or university level.
Mathematics is a core fundamental to great programming skills for modern Tech Innovation, therefore it is a subject we need to start embracing to develop great and innovative solutions ranging from AR, VR, AI to Robotics. There are many barriers within the Namibian tech ecosystem, from the lack of policies that would encourage startups to the combusome process of receiving foreign payments within Namibia. But, nonetheless, we need to push and we hope to make this developers summit an annual event.
