AGCCI TVET Coding and Robotics Boot Camp — AI Skills for Young Women at Motheo TVET College, Bloemfontein

The African Girls Can Code Initiative (AGCCI) South Africa TVET Coding and Robotics Boot Camp is a partnership between the UN Women South Africa Multi-Country Office and the national Department of Higher Education and Training, part of a wider AGCCI programme also supported by Siemens and the Belgian government that has previously run school-level cohorts (40 girls in Polokwane in 2023; a TVET-focused cohort of 90-100 Grade 11 learners from all nine provinces in Pretoria/Johannesburg in 2024-2025, whose curriculum explicitly included artificial intelligence, robotics and cybersecurity).

The Free State edition ran from 29 June to 9 July 2026 at Motheo TVET College in Bloemfontein, training 40 young women drawn from Motheo TVET College and the Free State Community Education and Training (CET) College. The 10-day curriculum covered artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity, coding, mobile application development and UI/UX design, concluding with a two-day hackathon and certification ceremony. UN Women South Africa representative Aleta Miller framed the intervention as targeting the point where the STEM pipeline for women breaks down between education and the workforce. Participants Boitumelo Garing (21, Information Technology in Robotics student) and Boitumelo Shale (19, ICT Level 4 student) are quoted describing increased confidence and a clearer sense of a technology career path.

Evidence is drawn from UN Women's own programme reporting and local press coverage of the camp opening/closing events; there is no published skills assessment, employment follow-up or independent evaluation of the Free State cohort, and the reported outcomes are participant testimonials and organiser counts rather than measured learning gains.

Read the full analysis: https://southafrica.un.org/en/317543-un-women-and-department-higher-education-and-training-launch-10-day-coding-boot-camp-young