Cape Town: The City libraries collectively hosted in-house coding sessions, commemorating the Mandela Day. In total, twenty-seven libraries took the initiative, and once the scores were in, two teams from Elsies River library made it to the top-three.
As they will go up against the top-performers from other libraries to determine who will advance the national competition in October and then the World Tournament in December.
Reportedly, the in-house coding sessions attracted 438 participants, forming more than 30 teams, who went head-to-head at 28 libraries.
The overall top performing teams, that were left at the end of the day was the Elsies River Tribal Chiefs, with the Belhar Rangers in second and Team Yoh! From the Elsies River, in third.
A session of unplugged coding was also held which required minimal data. As the app is only of 7MB, the teams were able to play TANKS or RANGERS offline, by using the app and the tokens from the game packs.
The Mandela Day Coding tournament was played at the national level with support from the Tangible Africa and Leva Foundation partners.
From the Mandela Day competition, the top-three teams by geographical area, will now move on to the next round. The twelve teams will compete head-to-head to determine the top three City teams who will be running to represent Cape Town in the national and World Tournament competitions.
Last year, in 2023, the final tournament welcomed participants from Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Germany and the United States of America and the three participating City libraries, that are placed in the top-10.
Considering this, Member of the Mayoral Committee for Community Services and Health – Councillor Patricia Van der Ross said that the libraries have really taken the proverbial bull by the horns with the coding initiative.
She said, “I am so happy to see how it is taking hold and hope that we can build on its growing popularity, by getting even more of the libraries and the communities involved in the future.”
Ross extended the wishes and said, “Congratulations to everyone who participated this time around and good luck to the teams who will move on to the rounds, still to come.”