In Case You Missed It: 2/21/17 — 2/27/17

Konbini.com

17 year-old Nij Collins is a win­ner of the Google Code-In competition.

This week’s most impor­tant head­lines out of and about Africa.

In this week’s news,  Nij Collins of Cameroon wins Google Code-In com­pe­ti­tion, the 19th Africa Ener­gy Forum dates are con­firmed, and South Africa remains in the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court despite Pres­i­dent Zuma’s notice of withdrawal.

Google Code-In com­pe­ti­tion sees first black-African winner

The Google Code-In com­pe­ti­tion is an open source project for pre-uni­ver­si­ty appli­cants. Par­tic­i­pants are required to be cur­rent­ly enrolled in a pre-uni­ver­si­ty pro­gram, between the ages of 13 and 17 years old and a pos­sess a will­ing­ness to learn. Under men­tor super­vi­sion, con­tes­tants devel­op and advance their skills in pro­gram­ming, out­reach, doc­u­men­ta­tion, test­ing and code reviews to name a few.

Nij Collins is a 17 year-old stu­dent from Bamen­da, Cameroon. Despite gov­ern­ment restric­tion of inter­net access in the Anglo­phone regions, Collins trav­eled to the Fran­coph­o­ne region to sub­mit his entry for the con­test. With the help of his men­tor and guid­ance from Open­MRS, Collins was suc­cess­ful and will be flown to Google head­quar­ters this summer.

19th Africa Ener­gy Forum to take place in Copen­hagen, Denmark

This June marks the 50th anniver­sary of Den­mark cel­e­brat­ing its Invest­ment Fund for Devel­op­ing Coun­tries (IFDC). Den­mark cur­rent­ly leads the world in clean ener­gy poli­cies. This forum will dis­cuss project part­ner­ships with lead­ing ener­gy com­pa­nies to iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties between the Nordic States and the African con­ti­nent. Over 30 African coun­tries par­tic­i­pate in this forum annu­al­ly to col­lec­tive­ly move the ener­gy indus­try for­ward. Past forums have boast­ed hav­ing 2000 par­tic­i­pants from 80 countries.

African Ener­gy is a UK-based busi­ness intel­li­gence provider man­aged and owned by Cross-bor­der Infor­ma­tion (CbI). This orga­ni­za­tion con­sults risk analy­sis and pri­ma­ry infra­struc­ture sec­tors in the Mid­dle East and African con­ti­nent. The Africa Ener­gy Forum will take place June 7–9, 2017.

South Africa rejects Pres­i­dent Zuma’s with­draw­al from Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court

In Octo­ber 2016, Pres­i­dent Jacob Zuma of South Africa request­ed to with­draw from the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court amid alle­ga­tions of the ICC tar­get­ing only-African nations. South Africa’s North Gaut­eng High Court has since over­ruled the request because Zuma failed to con­sult par­lia­ment pri­or to releas­ing his statement.

The High Court believes that South Africa’s his­tor­i­cal com­mit­ment to its human rights for­eign pol­i­cy con­tra­dicts this request and would set a bad exam­ple for the world. South Africa’s North Gaut­eng High Court has since ordered Pres­i­dent Zuma and the Min­istries of Jus­tice and For­eign Affairs to revoke their request.