Le Wagon, has set up shop in the Mother City and set its sights on providing practical skills to assist individuals with getting jobs in the technology sector.
Figures from StatsSA showed that unemployment for young people aged 25 to 34 increased by 6.9% to 22.4% in the first quarter of this year.
Now a partnership between Le Wagon and Red & Yellow creative school of business, has made it its mission to make it possible for more people to learn digital skills that will change their lives and thrive in the tech industry.
Le Wagon has 45 campuses around the world and has chosen Cape Town to be location 46.
Managing director at Red & Yellow and lead at Le Wagon SA, Verusha Maharaj said their focus has always been on upskilling the next generation.
“We realised that coding has become a crucial part of this, hence the decision to partner with the leading bootcamp in the world,” she said.
The bootcamps in web development and data science are created to enable students to learn coding, digital exercises, build web applications from scratch and work on data science projects. This will all happen over 360 hours.
Le Wagon Cape Town manager Ryan Brouwer said they want to equip graduates with the right skills in key sectors in order to drive transformation and support inclusive growth.
“Coding bootcamps respond to this challenge, by offering a practical and intensive format to entry-level and mature learners,” he said.
He added: “We want to provide them with the ability to become a competent junior developer within three months.”
In a statement on Tuesday, Le Wagon said they want to ‘foster the local tech ecosystem’.
To do so, they plan on hosting free coding workshops and tech talks twice a month.
The Le Wagon Cape Town campus will be based at the Red & Yellow creative school of business in Woodstock. Its first full-time web development bootcamp will take place on August 29.