UNESCO-CODEMAO Youth Coding & AI Initiative Trains Teachers in the Republic of the Congo

Launched in April 2021, the UNESCO-CODEMAO Youth Coding Initiative pairs UNESCO's Contextual Analysis and Foresight Unit for Priority Africa with CODEMAO, China's largest children's coding platform, to build coding and AI literacy among teachers and students in the Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Namibia and Thailand. In its first phase (2021–2023), roughly 99–100 teachers were trained via webinars and CODEMAO's graphical 'Kitten Editor' tool plus ten localised lesson plans; teachers subsequently submitted 82 coding projects to their national UNESCO offices for evaluation and certification, with 45–51% of projects credited to women teachers.
A second phase, launched with a study visit to China in July 2024, expanded the initiative to six countries (adding Côte d'Ivoire and China itself) and sharpened its focus on girls, rural and disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities. A further week-long exchange is scheduled for July 2026, sending selected Congolese, Kenyan, Namibian and Thai teachers and students to China's National Center for Educational Technology for hands-on AI and coding workshops.
The programme's own reporting is candid that outcomes are process measures — training completions, project submissions, certification pass rates — rather than independent measures of student learning gains, and the total number of teachers reached to date remains in the low hundreds relative to Congo's national teaching workforce.

Read the full analysis: https://educationnews.co.ke/machakos-ict-teacher-heads-to-china-for-unesco-backed-ai-training/