I got the exciting opportunity to travel to Somaliland to see if a dream project could be brought to fruition. The whole adventure is played out in almost real time through a Youtube video blog. You find the 15 videos capturing the adventure below the project description. Subscribe to this web site to follow the progress as I put up more blog posts regarding this project.

THE PROJECT

Educating young talents to become software developers who can compete for contracts on the global stage. Creating sustainable jobs and bringing money in to Somaliland.

THE DETAILS

The sale of physical goods is constrained by logistics and customs barriers. The sale of services is more free and competitive. A software developer in Somaliland can freely compete on the global scene against developers in Europe, the US, India and elsewhere. Customers buy services from the programmer that can deliver the best software for the best price. By effectively training software programmers in Somaliland, one can get motivated young people up and running within a year. No high school, college or university training needed to participate - just a burning desire to develop software and basic English reading and writing skills are required. We can focus the training to the task at hand - to get effective programmers to compete for software development contracts. No fuss, no unnecessary training, no slacking or messing around. We execute a few simple steps to start the ball rolling in establishing Somaliland as a nation to be reckoned with in the world of IT.

Get a training ground up and running with a location and laptops Recruit young people with a burning desire to become a software programmer Run a 6 month programming course with excellent teachers from around the world Get the participants in to Open Source software projects as trainees for 6 months Sign them up on platforms like Upworks.com and Freelancer.com Coach them to win contracts on the various platforms Mentor them through their first contract deliveries Praise, reward, repeat Use the best participants as teachers for the next batch of hopefuls

And with this we can create jobs and sow the seeds for an emerging industry in the nation.

THE VIDEOS

Link to this post: https://isene.org/2019/04/Somaliland.html