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Business Reporter
Econet Wireless says it has invested towards training of 1 000 young people as specialist computer programme coders over the last 12 months despite the problems that continue besetting the economy.

The young school leavers who were selected for the programme are among the 40 000 orphaned children who annually receive education support from Econet Wireless and its founder Mr Strive Masiyiwa.

The company has set up a special training facility called Muzinda Hub, which is equipped with the latest computer systems to train young people on how to design computer programmes, known as “apps”.

Those trained can also design websites for companies around the world. The young computer programme coders will be able to join other young people from across Africa competing to earn part of the $5 billion a year spent on buying services from African programmers.

Explaining the initiative, Mr Douglas Mboweni, Econet Zimbabwe chief executive said: “Muzinda Hub is training coders who will earn millions for themselves and the country.

“This is a huge industry globally and even in Africa where countries like South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria are earning hundreds of millions a year from this industry.”

The Econet CEO said the Muzinda Hub graduates would be trained to become independent entrepreneurs, and assisted to become real business people.

“The vision Mr Masiyiwa gave us was that we must equip them to become independent business people. This is a scholarship programme in skills development to position Zimbabwe in the future economy,” said the chief executive of Zimbabwe’s biggest network operator.

A programmer, computer programmer, developer, coder, or software engineer is a person who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes codes for many kinds of software, according to online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

As such, a person who practices or professes a formal approach to programming may also be known as a programmer analyst. A programmer’s primary computer language (Assembler, COBOL, C, C++, C#, Java, Lisp, Python,) is often prefixed to these titles, and those who work in a Web environment often prefix their titles with Web.

The term programmer can be used to refer to a software developer, Web developer, mobile applications developer, embedded firmware developer, software engineer, computer scientist, or software analyst.

However, members of these ICT professions possess other software engineering skills, beyond programming; for this reason, the term programmer, or code monkey, is sometimes considered an insulting or derogatory oversimplification of these other professional capabilities.

This has sparked much debate amongst developers, analysts, computer scientists, programmers, and outsiders who continue to be puzzled at the subtle differences in the definitions of these occupations.