Skip to content 
The Mathare Community Library Center (MCCL) in Nairobi, Kenya is located in a very poor district where around 500,000 people live in disadvantaged conditions. Many families only share one room for sleeping, eating, living, and school drop-out rates are high. A place like the library is therefore an important contact point for young people, where they can do homework, read and learn, exchange ideas and develop their digital skills. Together with MediaMundo, we will further develop the capacities of the small library for educational services in the coming months, made possible by funding from the North-South Bridges Foundation: the library will be better equipped with textbooks and IT infrastructure, training capacities of the MCCL will be developed and tutoring and IT educational services for different target groups will be expanded.
News & Articles
Leapfrog joined the Internet Society
By joining the Internet Society, we want to shape the digital transformation together with an international community and bring voices from our IT education projects in Africa into the discourse. We want to work with the Internet Society to make the internet free, secure, trusted and resilient and to fill digital sovereignty with content.
ICT for female agriculture project ended with good results
Without women, nothing would work in agriculture in Kpassa in the Nkwanta North District, Oti Region in Ghana. They do the field work, process the agricultural products such as tomatoes, cassava or peanuts and sell them on the market. However, they have little control over the value chains and often earn little income. Yet the market in Kpassa offers potential for digital marketing of agricultural products, and with the women’s cooperative there is a structure that can support this process. Simple apps for agriculture and agribusiness allow women to make informed decisions and thus operate more economically. Together with the women’s cooperative Lineenbaal and the local NGO Fair River International Association for Development (FARIAD), we wanted to change the situation for the many female farmers. Funded by the Migration and Diaspora Program of GIZ, we introduced women farmers to digital technologies and showed them ways to market their products online between September 2021 and February 2022. The latter was done through a train-the-trainer approach, so that FARIAD can now accompany the women in the further steps.
Enabling 50 teachers to become digital literate
IT is part of the curriculum of primary schools in Uganda, but many teachers, especially in rural areas, have never received any education or training in digital skills. How are they supposed to pass these on to their students? This is where we come in. With the financial support of the Foundations Eudim and North-South Bridges, we will make 50 teachers from Bukedea District digitally fit over a period of 6 months. In addition to IT basics, we will work with the Berlin-based policy agency Polyspektiv to motivate, guide and inspire the teachers to use digital tools in group work. In this way, we not only want to build up digital competence, but also strengthen the students’ and teachers’ understanding of democracy and their ability to reflect, discuss and form opinions.
“Empowerment through digitalisation” – 2nd phase of IT trainings in Mathare ready for kick off
Together with Media Mundo we will start the second round of IT trainings for young people in Nairobi’s informal settlement Mathare on 19 June. The virtual and face-to-face workshops on media literacy, social media, internet privacy, fundraising and other topics will take place in the “Glimmer of Hope” community library in centre of Mathare, which now offers more space after renovation.
“Digitale Bildung für den Acker” – Article by Leapfrog in the “Südlink” Magazine
“So far, it is mainly the global agribusines that benefis from digital agriculture. By teaching digital skills, smallholder farmers can also use this development to farm more productively and efficiently and improve their lives,” write Andrea Glaab and Katrin Jullien in Südlink Magazine about Leapfrog’s experience with digital skills training for women working in agriculture in Kpassa in Ghana.
Kick off in Cameroon for trainings on digital Marketing and WordPress
Together with our partner organisation ActivSpaces from Cameroon, we have launched a 3 months of intensive training for young people in Buea on WordPress and digital marketing. The aim of the training is to enable young people to find income opportunities in the so-called “Silicon Mountain” of Buea. As we found out in a previous analysis, the educational offers have so far only insufficiently succeeded in training skilled workers who can develop international standard products. The trainings are funded by Stiftung Nord-Süd-Brücken and private donations.
Digital skills for teachers in Uganda – not only for Corona times
The closure of schools in Uganda due to Corona hits many pupils hard. But not everyone is equally affected. While students from well-off families can take advantage of online learning opportunities, this is not possible for many students. They and their teachers have no access to digital media and only limited digital skills. Together with our partner organisation ADEGO from Bukedea, Uganda and the Stiftung Eudim, we would like to change this situation. We aim to provide 50 teachers with digital skills, give them and students access to fast internet and show what potential digital tools have for a different kind of teaching. We would like to thank the Stiftung Eudim for the great donation of 3000 EUR for this project!
Economic perspectives in a crisis – business development in Buea, Cameroon
With funding from the Foundation North-South Bridges and many private donations, we and our partner organisation ActivSpaces from Cameroon have been supporting IT training with a focus on business development since 01.09. Although Buea is also called “Silicon Mountain” because of its creative IT scene and ecosystem, there is a lack of IT professionals. The education programmes do not sufficiently succeed in educating and training specialists who can develop international standard IT products. With practice-oriented training courses in Buea, we want to make young people with an affinity for technology fit in digital marketing, wordpress and customer communication by June 2021 and thus strengthen their economic prospects.
IT Trainings in Nairobi’s slum Mathare for young people
Roughly 500,000 people live in a very confined space in Mathare. Access to education is a challenge for most young people there anyway, and even more so in times of Corona. Schools in Kenya will probably remain closed until January 2021. Together with “Bildung fördert Entwicklung“, “Mathare Community Center Library” and “Media Mundo” we have been offering computer courses in the community library “Glimmer of Hope” in the middle of Mathare computer courses since July. Besides basic computer skills, we want to teach how digital technologies can be used to attract public awareness for Mathare. Over the next few months, we want to teach 300 young people digital skills to better prepare them for their professional future.
