Google’s new coding champion is a 17-year-old Cameroonian whose hometown has been cut off the internet

Originally shared by Ward Plunet

Google’s new coding champion is a 17-year-old Cameroonian whose hometown has been cut off the internet

In Nov. 2016, Nji Collins Gbah, a tech enthusiast from Bamenda, Cameroon, started participating in the Google Code-in competition, the global online contest which introduces pre-university students aged 13 to 17 to the world of open source. Despite his tenacity, the odds seem stacked against Gbah. In 2016 alone, over 1,300 students from 62 countries took part in the competition. In total, they completed more than 6,400 tasks related to coding, research, documentation, quality assurance and improving user interfaces. During the seven-week program, Gbah completed 20 tasks using the Open Medical Record System, or OpenMRS, a platform that focuses on improving healthcare service in developing countries. “I was anxious,” Gbah wrote in a blog post published a day before the deadline on Jan. 16. But “I had to find ways to turn my nervousness into creativity and fun.” Gbah said that he chose to participate with OpenMRS “because the whole idea of writing code to save lives was really amazing and I wanted to be part of it.”
https://qz.com/909614/a-cameroonian-17-year-old-won-the-google-code-in-after-the-internet-was-shut-down-in-his-hometown-of-bamenda/