This startup will teach your kids how to code and give them a free laptop

According to a Brookings report, half of sub-Saharan Africa's total primary school population (about 61 million children) will reach adolescence with a critical lack of basic skills needed to lead productive lives.

It is this deficit of knowledge that a new social startup called Sparkplug is trying to solve with its program.

To make this happen, Sparkplug will accept laptop donations from individuals (don't worry, they are promising to wipe it and install a new Linux - Ubuntu 16.04 OS).

Once the donated laptops come in, the company will install a new operating system as well as a complete version of its curriculum including videos and tutorials on software engineering.

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Prospective students can then apply for a laptop, though they will need to state why they want a laptop and how they plan to use software to solve an existing problem in their environment.

Sparkplug will then select the best ideas and pass on the donated laptop to the student. Once that is done, Sparkplug will monitor the students progress periodically to learn more about trends and how to make the product better. It also says it will make the data it collects available publicly.

The idea is to push social change, empower children and to do so remotely leveraging the power of technology and unsupervised learning.

The platform will utilise a set of publicly available, open source learning materials which it has curated to teach the students how to write code.

Last year saw a considerable rise in EdTech startups in the Nigerian tech space but none of those startups have a social enterprise angle to them. It will be interesting to see how Sparkplug gets along - Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (founder of Flutterwave) already hails the project. Pulse Tech wishes the team the best!