Today I was to be on the shores of the Dead Sea.

I have been in Jordan before, teaching coding in schools, universities and in the huge Syrian refugee camp at Za'atari (photo) with my good friends Batoul, Ibi, Claire, Bernard, Bruno, Kevin, Nuala and Shadi.

Yesterday I was supposed to have travelled back to Jordan to present at a UNESCO conference along the shores of the Dead Sea.

My presentation at the ‘Global Media and Information Literacy Week’ conference was, in a time of fake news, online hostility and abuse, to showcase a pioneering good news digital literacy project that was part of a process of bringing hope, creativity, togetherness and positive change across an entire continent.

I was so excited to be doing so!

For since it was established in 2015, the Africa Code Week initiative led by SAP and through a partnership of Camden Educational Trust, UNESCO, Association for the Development of Education in Africa, Irish Aid, multiple African governments and grassroots NGOs, has taught over 100,000 teachers and millions of youth in 41 countries how to become proficient in coding. But it has also through its programmes promoted cultural diversity and respect, inclusivity, female empowerment, art as a learning medium, awareness of the importance of the natural environment, sustainability, innovation, technology skill sets, and delivering an learning environment that is enjoyable, practical, holistic and meaningful to participants.

But today I find myself in Ireland and not in the Middle East. The war in Gaza understandably led to the cancellation of the conference by UNESCO and the Jordanian government.

So my prayers and thoughts are with the Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli peoples at this very dangerous time. Especially with the residents of Gaza who are living in what is the world’s largest concentration camp being denied water, food, electricity, fuel, education and human dignity whilst their homes and neighbourhoods are being pulverised.

I have worked in Palestinian and Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, with refugees in Egypt and Turkey, taught in schools in the Hezbollah stronghold of Nabatieh, and met with Jews whose parents or grandparents survived the Nazi Holocaust in Europe and the pogroms of Yemen, Iraq and North Africa.

In spite of the suffering I have often seen, I am always inspired by the unbelievably good and kind people I met who in the most terrible circumstances keep on trying to help others.

I am inspired too when I witness over the last week Jewish people marching in the hundreds sometimes in their thousands on the streets of New York, Washington and London demanding justice for their Muslim, Christian and secular Palestinian neighbours and an end to the brutal occupation of the West Bank and the destruction of Gaza.

The Middle East belongs to all of its peoples be they Jew, Shia, Sunni, Christian, Yazidi, Alawite or atheist. There has to be a lasting just peace for all.

But sadly we are living in dangerous times when conflict and war are on the rise due to the machismo arrogance of egotistical male leaders who use differences of religion, race and political ideology to promote division, hate and fear in order to retain power.

In the last few years, we have witnessed ethnic cleansing in Ukraine, Myanmar, Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Nagorno Karabakh; tribal lands being stolen in Brazil and India; women being reduced to becoming the property of men in Afghanistan and being treated as second class citizens in Iran; democracy being snuffed out in Hong Kong; the rise of intolerant misogynistic fundamental strands in many religions; our oceans being militarised; fossil fuel companies corrupting the political system in the USA and worldwide; the leaders of some powerful western and Arab countries destroying Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan; and in the case of USA, UK, France and the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, giving complete backing to the most right-wing government in the history of Israel; and witnessing the natural world being destroyed at an ever-increasing rate.

There has been exposure too in the courts of Ireland and across the world of how powerful male clerics of my own Christian Catholic religion have been responsible for the most heinous crimes against untold defenceless innocent children.

Yet I am still an optimist. I wholeheartedly believe in the goodness of ordinary everyday people. I believe in a future where all states are secular, which respects all religions but gives preference to none; that has equality for all sexes, race and creed and where the rule of law exists to protect the citizen from the oppressor; where Climate Change, biodiversity protection, sustainability and social justice is central to all government policies and where all technological innovation, products and processes have to be benign or else they are withdrawn.

In a world where over one million species face extinction due to our behaviour and where our time as a species is running out, we need to recognise the rest of humanity as our brothers and sisters and the planet as our mother.

This can be done if we fully implement the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the Charter of the United Nations-they provide a pathway for us all to follow.

Please look closely at the people in the photo- they are wonderful men, women and children who were forced to flee their homeland of Syria to live in a refugee camp (Za’atari) in Jordan. It was not their choice-they left behind jobs, friends, dreams and so much more to escape persecution and death to live in a camp in a desert.

P.S. Apologies if this piece reads as a naïve and rambling narrative. But I just decided this evening to sit down and write something about how I felt about the state of the world.

Back under an African Sky: South Sudan

 

After an absence of 7 months, I have happily returned to Africa to continue teaching technology programmes to teachers and students in schools across the continent.

For 8 exciting years, I was a master mentor and course content developer for the Africa Code Week(ACW) initiative. 

Founded by the SAP corporation in association with Camden Trust, UNESCO, Irish Aid, African governments and 130 implementing partners across 54 African countries, ACW represented the largest educational digital movement in the history of the continent.

 

Now that this wonderful initiative is being transitioned to the African governments and learning from the experiences gained over these years, I am now part of the Camden Trust team, that with Irish government support, led by the visionary Bernard Kirk and working alongside the wonderful Linda Cardiff is helping to continue bringing more much needed technological projects and resources to African education in order to empower its youth especially females, on the youngest continent in the world, to become digital creators and innovators in order to create a better more sustainable egalitarian future for its peoples. 

 

Our first mission was to the Republic of South Sudan to organise a pilot World Robot Olympiad in a girls secondary school in the town of Rumbek. Such an initiative is needed in a country where there are huge cultural and economic obstacles to female education. Only 17% of girls finish primary school and only 4% complete a secondary school education. Few children can afford books and the classroom blackboard remains the primary means of delivering education.

 

Our task was only made possible by the fantastic hard working determined ground-breaking pioneering principal of the Catholic Loreto convent compound with its circa 1200 students, its primary and secondary schools, its community medical clinic and farm. Sister Orla Treacy from Bray in county Wicklow is a force of nature. Working in Rumbek since 2006, she has helped transform the hopes and aspirations of young South Sudanese women, creating educational routes that never previously existed, securing funding for them to continue university studies in Juba, Nairobi Kenya and elsewhere before returning to their homeland after graduation to help in developing the youngest country in the world. South Sudan only came into existence in 2011 after securing independence from Sudan. From 2013 until 2020, its people suffered a brutal civil war that led to the death of 400,000 civilians. 

 

More stories to follow over the coming days now that I am back in Ireland.

An Irishman’s Journey across Africa: The Botswana Story, Part 1.

 

Thanks to the fantastic Africa Code Week (ACW) initiative I have, since May 2015, worked extensively across Africa, from Cairo in the north to Cape Town in the south. I have been in places and have meet peoples that have gone beyond my wildest dreams. I consider myself extremely lucky and blessed to have been granted these wonderful opportunities and have been humbled by the encounters and experiences gained.

In my latest short article on the continent that was the birthplace of our species, I throw the spotlight on a country that still vibrates with the pulse of pre-colonial Africa.

Botswana is a place like no other on Earth. With 35% of its territory designated national park and with a small population, there was until recently a strong peaceful cultural harmony between the nation and the rest of Nature. The country is ‘wild Africa at it best’ and is home to a third of the continent’s elephant population earning it the accolade of being the last refuge for this endangered and most iconic of all mammals. There is a saying that many travel to Botswana for its wildlife and stay for its people. In my case it was slightly different; I came to the country for its people (to teach coding) and wanted to remain not just for its remarkable wildlife, breathtakingly stunning primordial diverse landscapes, but also for the warm and gentle Batswana (the Tswana peoples). It is a peaceful society, has a high literary rate, a low level of corruption and a strong justice system. Unlike so many countries worldwide, there is little religious, social, racial or ethnic tensions nor the scar of urban ghettoisation.

In my bias opinion, I am the country’s No 1 fan! But I only found out since my last visit the real reason why Botswana has cast such a spell of enchantment over me. The answer will be given in my next posting on southern Africa!

But Botswana though is not an earthly paradise. Like elsewhere, it has serious economic, social and environmental problems. In a country that is comprised of circa 70% desert, drought and desertification are issues of growing concern exacerbated by Climate Change and huge increases in commercial livestock herding. It has a high incidence of HIV/AIDS particularly amongst the young (15-24 age group) who account for c50% of new cases; and it is where the so-call ‘blesser’ culture still exists in which older rich men use money and expensive gifts to entice young girls into male controlled sexual relationships. There has been controversy too over the handling of the land rights of the indigenous ‘San’ hunter-gatherers. From traditional low levels of elephant poaching, the last year has seen a significant rise.

Youth employment is very high in the country. Whilst it is large at 19% for the total population, it is 34% amongst the younger age group.

The latter is the reason why I have worked in the country on four separate occasions since 2016 and hopefully will do so again in the future. As part of the African Code Week initiative (involving 37 countries), we deliver teacher and mentor training in computer coding, supporting its introduction into primary/secondary school curricula in order to provide its young people with key digital skills for the 21st century. Over the years, this programme has been organised in partnership with local NGOs (Ngwana Enterprises, The Clicking Generation, Techno Kids Center, People-Powered Generation), the country’s mining corporation(Debswana)) and the government of Botswana. There is an enthusiastic appetite for technology and digital innovation amongst students and teachers, and science is being giving increased recognition in the educational system. Young entrepreneurs are setting up their own high tech companies to take advantage of the global web. State policy is to expand the national economic base and its ICT infrastructure in order to provide the jobs that its highly intelligent youth urgently require.

Diamonds and tourism are the country’s two primary sources of revenue. Botswana is one of world’s top diamond producers with the state owning 50% of the mining company responsible, and thankfully not having the associated violence, illegal extraction, criminality and corruption that many other mining countries have suffered from. I have worked in the closed mining town of Orapa, which was an amazing experience. Mining is now complemented by the add-on value of a diamond cutting and polishing industry based in the capital.

In the case of tourism, there is a movement towards diversification. The Okavango Delta is one of the most famed natural habitats in the world and is renowned for its high quality eco-tourism and low ecological footprint. The government wants to bring the Okavango sustainable model, that is characterised by collaboration with indigenous communities, environmental protection and sustainability, to other regions across Botswana. There are proposals to develop a cross-border bilateral approach to tourism such as linking in with Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls. ‘Conference tourism’ in its two cities, namely Francestown and Gaberone, is a new area of development.

I have enjoyed my time working with its young ACW ambassadors. So I extend my heartfelt thanks and appreciation to Phatsimo, Mooketsi, Tebogo, Agang, Monk and Kesego for their professionalism and friendship in this most beautiful of countries. Until we meet again, I say to all of you keep safe and healthy.

Proud to be Irish in Tanzania!

A few weeks ago I was present in Dar es Salaam to listen to the Irish Ambassador to Tanzania, Paul Sherlock, officially announce that Irish Aid, the Irish government's international development aid programme, had become a partner and sponsor of the Africa Code Week(ACW) initiative.

I was there in the companionship of my fellow Irishmen, the wonderful Kevin Conroy and Liam Ryan (SAP Ireland CEO), as well as the visionary Claire Gillissen from France.

It was my third trip to this lovely country in my capacity as a lead mentor and course content developer for ACW. The first time was during the summer of 2017 in the company of Bernard Kirk, Camden Trust CEO/ Director of the Galway Education Centre, and Ciaran Cannon TD, then newly appointed Minister of State for the Diaspora and International Development.

This Irish Aid announcement continues a long tradition, going back to the 19th century, of Irish people being involved in supporting the continent and its people in the areas of education, health, community development and human rights.

In so many African countries that I have visited since 2015, I have talked to Africans that tell me fondly of the help that they have received from the Irish. In Uganda it was a senior civil servant called Patrick who was taught by Irish priests; in South Africa it was a Muslim teacher who was given his schooling by Irish clerics; in Ethiopia it was a NGO manager applauding the work of Trócaire and Camara in his country; in Tanzania it was the teenagers of the Holy Union Sisters Debrabant High School praising their principal, Sister Annette Farrell from Kilconnel in east Galway.

Unlike some other European countries, Ireland never came to Africa as an colonial power to brutally rob it of its human and natural resources. We came not as conquerors but as educators and healers. During the days of the British Empire, when our own country was a colony, our countrymen and women often arrived as teachers and doctors to countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. It was said by many that I have met during the course of my travels across the continent that, where it not for the Irish clerics, their parents and grandparents would never have got an education. So many leaders of the independence movement were taught in Irish-run schools.

This Irish tradition of education and community empowerment continues with the ongoing work of Trocaire, Concern, Gorta Self Help Africa, Goal and Irish Aid that includes individuals that I have known and that I have the upmost respect for, such as Ronan Scully, Alan Kerins and Diarmuid Ó'Brien.

But this tradition also got a major technology learning surge in recent years with the involvement of Irish personnel of SAP Ireland and of Camden Trust as trainers in the wonderfully inspiring Africa Code Week. Along with Claire Gillissen, Bernard Kirk played a fundamental role in establishing in 2015 what today is surely the largest pan-Atlantic digital literacy initiative in the history of the continent. Thanks to the great organisational skills of Sunil Geness, Ibrahim Khafagy, Julie Cleverdon, Ademola Ajayi and so many other great Africans, it is supported by 28 governments, partnering 130 partners (mainly local NGOs), has been rolled out to 37 countries and has provided coding workshops to over 4.1 million youth and teachers.

The aim of Africa Code Week is to build community capacity to drive sustainable learning impact across Africa instilling coding skills in the young generation.

So I give a big and sincere 'Bualadh Bos' to my fellow Irish men and women who worked with me in Africa as part of ACW- Kevin Conroy, Nuala Dalton, Nuala Allen, Cliodhna and Aoife Kirk. Africa's time has come and they have helped it to happen