#131 – Abraham Waita on Nurturing Young WordPress Enthusiasts in Uganda

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, nurturing young WordPress enthusiasts in Uganda.

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So on the podcast today, we have Abraham Waita.

Abraham is a Woo Happiness Engineer at Automattic and is very active in the WordPress communities of both Kenya and Uganda. He’s recently given a talk at WordCamp Europe, which we discuss in this episode.

Abraham has been instrumental in rolling out WordPress to high schools in Uganda. Fostering a rapidly growing young WordPress community. His talk entitled, Diverse and Sustainable Future: How High School Teachers in Uganda are Nurturing a Young WordPress Community, shines a light on this initiative.

We explore the dynamics of the WordPress community in Uganda, it’s impressive growth and the challenges it has faced along the way. Abraham provides insights into how WordPress is being taught in high school, through the ICT curriculum, and the creative project students have undertaken.

He also discusses the importance of community support, including sponsorships and hardware donations, and how these contributions can immensely benefit the educational enterprise.

Towards the end of our conversation, we get into the broader impact of this initiative on students’ futures, and how companies, or individuals, can sponsor this endeavor. If you’re passionate

about education, WordPress, or community growth, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Abraham Waita.

I am joined on the podcast by Abraham Waita. Hi Abraham.

[00:03:05] Abraham Waita: Hey Nathan. I’ve just come from my talk and I’m feeling the nervousness is dying down, so I’m finally enjoying WordCamp Europe.

[00:03:12] Nathan Wrigley: Have you just done it just now?

[00:03:13] Abraham Waita: A few hours ago, but the emotions leading to the talk were so high, so right now I’m just letting everything go like down.

[00:03:22] Nathan Wrigley: I’m very impressed of anybody that can do a talk at an event like this because it must be very nerve wracking. And until it’s over, I guess you’re carrying it around until it’s actually finished. So well done, thank you.

That is actually the topic of the conversation today. We’re going to talk about the subject that you talked about on stage. But before we get into that, could you just introduce yourself. Maybe, I don’t know, a minute, thirty seconds. Just tell us who you are, where you live, who you work for, that kind of thing.

[00:03:46] Abraham Waita: Yeah, so, Abraham, I’m based in Nairobi, Kenya, but I’m actually active in two WordPress communities. That’s the WordPress community in Kenya, and the one in Uganda. And the funny fact is that I attend more WordCamps in Uganda than in Kenya. That’s why I am associated with the community in Uganda more than the one in Kenya. I work at Automattic as a Woo Happiness Engineer, so I’m usually supporting people using WooCommerce, specifically with, I help with payment issues and, outside that is when I go to do community work.

[00:04:22] Nathan Wrigley: So the talk that you did was entitled as follows, Diverse and sustainable future: How high school teachers in Uganda are nurturing a young WordPress community. And when I saw that title, I thought, well, I really want to know a little bit more about that. So that’s what we’ve got you in to talk about today.

Can you just tell us a little bit about the community, the WordPress community in Uganda? Is it growing? Is it shrinking? Is it large? Is it small? The only point of reference that I’ve got is WordPress. I confess, I’ve never been to Uganda, I don’t know anything about it. I’m imagining quite a few of the people listening have also not been to Uganda. But I’d be just interested to hear, just tell us what it’s like over there for the WordPressers.

[00:04:59] Abraham Waita: Yeah. The community’s growing at a very high rate right now because we are rolling out WordPress to all high schools in Uganda, and all high schools combined have 1.4 million students. So as we introduce more of them to WordPress, the community keeps growing, and that’s one of the things we are having, is the surging numbers in attendees who want to come to WordCamps. Because the venues are now limited such that we have to introduce some sort of limitations to who can come. And as we look for bigger venues, the community’s growing very rapidly right now.

[00:05:34] Nathan Wrigley: That’s interesting because that stands in stark contrast to where I am, which is the UK. When Covid came along, that kind of really did shutter the WordPress community down, and the events have not come back yet. But you have a very different experience in Uganda, so that’s really nice to hear. It’s growing, and in fact, at events, you’re turning people away because there’s not enough space in the venues. That’s absolutely fascinating.

Is it just WordPress, or is it open source in general? So for example, would I find, I don’t know if you know, but would I find a growing Drupal community as well, or is it uniquely WordPress?

[00:06:08] Abraham Waita: It’s mostly WordPress because it’s the tool that’s being broadcasted in high schools, like being spread out in high schools. So that’s the main focus for now. As we try to move into more schools with WordPress, we are getting more of that development in WordPress.

Maybe other CMSs will also grow as a result of people looking for alternatives, but for now it’s mostly WordPress that’s growing.

[00:06:30] Nathan Wrigley: In the part of the world where I live, if children were to encounter WordPress, it would probably be because of a parent. As far as I’m aware, and forgive me if I’ve got this wrong, there’s no school program. I mean, maybe some ingenious teacher is offering a club after school, but as far as I’m aware, there’s no state sponsored, government led WordPress training. Is that what’s happening in Uganda? Is it officially inside the school time, it’s being taught as an actual lesson, or is it more end of the day club kind of thing?

[00:07:04] Abraham Waita: It’s taught in a subject called ICT, and it was open-ended for teachers to interpret how they would like to teach it, because the curriculum just said, we need your students to be able to come up with a project that solves problems in their communities. So initially how they were teaching that subject, the ICT subject, was with tools that could not meet this requirement. And so they ended up turning to WordPress, and that’s how, right now, you’ll find, yes, students are in a computer lab learning WordPress.

[00:07:35] Nathan Wrigley: Got it. Okay, so it’s entirely up to the individual teacher how far they want to go with that. And they could ignore WordPress altogether, but it’s allowed, and many people are doing it. Why have they chosen WordPress in particular? Is it just because there is a community, and there’s understanding, broadly, of how it works?

[00:07:51] Abraham Waita: So, the biggest contributor was the, number one, it’s open source, and then the community involvement. So it’s now, let’s say, that there’s already a community around WordPress. There are WordCamps, there are meetup groups, so they’re not really starting from scratch if they want to spread it.

And those are some of the preexisting conditions that have made WordPress to grow quickly because you have sponsored WordCamps, you have preexisting meetup groups, and it’s from there that other things have come up. So we have moved from two active meetup groups to six, and most of the new ones are teacher led. They are using the meetup spaces to share knowledge to each other. And from the knowledge sharing, now the teachers move back to students, and the students get to benefit from what the teachers have learned. So it’s like a, not a food chain of knowledge, but yeah, something like that.

[00:08:48] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I understand. Yeah, so it’s kind of top down. It’s trickling down, yeah. And what kind of things are being taught? Because there’s just literally millions of things that you could teach people about WordPress. But, are you starting at the basics? Like how to install WordPress, here’s how to create a page. And just tell us what these curricular might look like.

[00:09:06] Abraham Waita: Sure. So the initial point is usually getting WordPress installed, and due to internet challenges, it’s usually on local hosts and using XAMP. And once the students know how to install WordPress on local host, they are now introduced to building pages, posts, and then lastly plugins.

So it’s from the plugins where the teachers now start stepping backwards, and they allow students to explore. So we have seen students who have come up with crazy projects because they went above and beyond in the exploration journey. So like, one of the projects, I ask the students, so how did you build this platform? You say, it allows students to filter the schools. And he was like, oh, I have plugins for this, and here I set up custom post types, I am using ACF something. And I was impressed because the teacher did not teach him that. He just went exploring, and from there, he got to know more than, let’s say, the teacher, and come up with huge projects.

[00:10:07] Nathan Wrigley: There’s a lot of guided learning, but then also you are seeing the children are just taking it off in any direction. I mean, I guess if you teach any subject, a proportion of children will be disinterested, and I’m sure that’s the case with WordPress. But there’s always going to be those who just hook into it and think, this is the best thing ever, and go off and explore and, as you said, start making things like custom post types, and what have you.

And I feel that, in the last few years, the way WordPress has gone since the advent of Gutenberg, the block editor, it’s made it much more powerful for a vanilla, non plugin WordPress, so just a vanilla install of WordPress. To get yourself something credible just with the block editor. So I imagine there’s a lot of experimentation with blocks and things like that as well.

[00:10:51] Abraham Waita: Yeah, actually one of the WordCamps I attended, the first session was covering blocks, and using Gutenberg to develop a functional site. And it’s from there that it’s like an entry point for beginners. Those are the learning points, what you can do with just a basic installation of WordPress.

[00:11:11] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, got it. Just to recap a little bit, you’ve got the meetups and there’s, now it’s gone from two to six, and at those you’ve got a lot of teachers attending as attendees to that event. And then they’re learning, and then they’re going back to their schools, and then they’re doing all these things. So it’s not like there’s one curricular, there’s just multiple different ways that it’s being taught.

[00:11:32] Abraham Waita: Yeah. So it’s a total of about six sustainable initiatives, that the teachers are using to spread WordPress quickly, as quickly as possible to all schools, to teachers and to students.

[00:11:43] Nathan Wrigley: Do you need more support in this endeavor? Is it growing at the point where you need to reach out and, I don’t know, maybe make it eight meet ups or twelve meet ups? And also, the finance of all of that because, although there’s a lot of voluntary time in, you know, you still have to do things like pay for the venue possibly, and things like that. Would you welcome some more support?

I imagine that there’ll be people listening into this podcast who maybe work for a company that’s got an initiative, that they may wish to contact you and discuss things. So are you looking for support, financial or otherwise?

[00:12:11] Abraham Waita: Sure. We really are looking for all possible support. So mostly, if there are, let’s say more sponsors currently, the sponsors that are available, we really appreciate them, but we still require more assistance. So there are some areas we could really grow.

Number one is getting bigger venues. So, as I said, we now have to limit to around 200 students, but what if now we could allow a thousand students from different schools.

Another thing, we have competitions going on, and a rewarding factor for participating in a competition is you get a present or something. So in the past, I would like to give maybe a shout out to two companies who have given some presents in the past. We have Yoast, who gave a free SEO training to winners of one competition. Alongside wordpress.com, who had some swag for them as well. It’s also a motivating factor.

Apart from that, yeah, there’s something else called a sponsor in kind in Uganda. So it goes all the way from, like last time someone gave a router, a 4G router to give internet to the production team, to the attendees, so that there’s wifi. And that’s as little as it can be like, from just being an enabler of the basic services to, let’s say, being a sponsor at a given level. And, yeah, your funds will really go a long way in that event. Maybe lunch for the attendees, something else like that.

[00:13:41] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So before we end this podcast, I’ll make absolutely sure that we’ve got any links to any pages that you may wish to point people towards. But we’ll also make sure that your contact details are there, and i’m imagine that you’ll be happy to receive emails about this subject.

You mentioned about motivating factors. Is that an important part of it? When these children are turning up to learn, are they seeing it just, I don’t know, it’s a bit of fun, I can build a website, or is there more to it? Like, okay, this could be a job for me.

Is there a certain sense of it carrying through after school. I don’t know if you track that, or if it’s been going for long enough to see that, look what we did, we’ve now got, I don’t know, 100, 200, 300 people who are building websites for clients all over the world. Is it carrying on after school? Is it, sustainable?

[00:14:23] Abraham Waita: Okay, so for carrying on, we are looking forward to the end of this year because that’s when the first cohort under the new curriculum will be examined. So when they go out, it’s the first group we will have coming out of high school with WordPress education. And then it’s, from there we can see whether they are taking it outside school. But from now, for the time being, yes, we have seen them taking some projects. So we have students who have built websites for their schools, where the schools didn’t have any websites, and now they have websites because the students learn how to use WordPress.

[00:14:56] Nathan Wrigley: So it is carrying on.

[00:14:58] Abraham Waita: Yes.

[00:14:58] Nathan Wrigley: Definitely carrying on, but I guess only time will tell how that goes. But if you’re pushing a lot of children through the project, I’m sure that, in the end, it will have that effect.

How does the actual lesson look? I think you mentioned something like a computer lab, or something like that. Again, I’ve no idea what schools are equipped with in Uganda. So, is it a bit like a classroom environment, where there’s computers around the wall and you just begin, and you carry on from where you left last time? Or is it, everybody sit down, look at the whiteboard at the front, or the blackboard or whatever it may be, and I’m going to teach you this thing, and then you’ve got to go over and experiment with that? What does the actual lesson look like?

[00:15:31] Abraham Waita: As a requirement for the ICT, the schools are offering ICT, they require computer labs. So it’s up to them to know how to, let’s say, schedule the classes into smaller groups to fit the number of computers they have, so that each student can attend like practically a lesson. But during WordCamps, you’ll find most students don’t have laptops. So during WordCamps, we just have a projector screen, and if it’s a tutorial, we are taking them through, one student will actually be doing the practical bit of it. But the learning part, we use computer lab, mostly computer labs in their schools.

[00:16:09] Nathan Wrigley: It’s difficult to sort of say, but where I come from in the UK, there’s a lot of laptops lying around. There’s many, many, laptops. I’m sure that quite a few of the children have got laptops, that’s not always the case.

Would you welcome anything like that? You know, do you need more actual hardware? You mentioned things like routers, and financial contributions and things. Anybody listening to this who might happen to have some of that stuff lying around, is that something you would welcome, or you’ve got to use certain things, and buy them through government channels, or what have you?

[00:16:35] Abraham Waita: Yeah, that would be really welcomed because one of the challenges is that there are schools who really can’t teach WordPress because they don’t have the basic requirement of a computer lab, because they don’t have laptops, they don’t have computers, they don’t have anything to teach this subject. So they are limited.

So the students in those schools unfortunately can’t benefit like the others. If there’s hardware support, computers, laptops, anything that can load WordPress installation, because it’ll be localised, it’s minimal resources. Anything like that could really go a long way in such schools.

[00:17:07] Nathan Wrigley: Have you played with Playground?

[00:17:10] Abraham Waita: Personally, not yet, but I would say it’s now a great thing, to have a quick installation of WordPress on the site. Although, in Uganda, for now it may be a challenge, because you need continuous connection, which the students may not have. That’s why, for now, they are still on XAMP and local host installations, something like that.

But, yes, that will be the future because the connectivity is coming and, yeah, we will have more opportunities to introduce students also to that. I also look forward to playing around with Playground.

[00:17:43] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s an amazing technology, and it feels that any part of the world, Uganda or anywhere else, it would be just such a superb tool for the classroom because you click a button, and four seconds, five seconds later, you have a WordPress installation.

There’s a few little caveats around that. There’s a few things that you can’t do, but broadly speaking, it works.

At the moment, when you close the browser, it goes away. But in the near future, one of the developers in the project, I think there are three of them now, they’re going to make it persistent.

So, you close the browser, and then sometime later open the browser, and it will still be there. But of course, I guess one of the things with that is that then it’s still stuck on your computer, which is fine if you possess a computer, but if you go home and the computer was at school, you then can’t use it. But maybe in the future it will be able to be exported somewhere.

[00:18:32] Abraham Waita: Yeah.

[00:18:33] Nathan Wrigley: How does the sort of hosting aspect go? Because you mentioned that a child had built school website. Did school pay for the hosting of that? How did it all of that happen?

[00:18:41] Abraham Waita: So there’s a lot of voluntary efforts going on, and some companies offer free hosting if possible. Sometimes the schools pay for the hosting. So it’s a mix. Sometimes the schools will pay, sometimes a volunteer will just support them by hosting. So that’s one of the hosts supporting, or sponsoring in kind initiatives I was mentioning. You don’t have to give, let’s say, a financial contribution, but hosting a site is one of the contribution ways.

[00:19:09] Nathan Wrigley: I mean, it all sounds absolutely amazing. It’s lovely to see a part of the world where WordPress is growing so rapidly. And I guess, you know, it’s from the endeavors of people like you that it’s all happening. So thank you for all of your hard work.

Can you mention any websites, or places we could go, organisations that we could find out about, that would enable us to find out more, but also maybe, I don’t know, send some sort of sponsorship, or donation, or something like that?

[00:19:35] Abraham Waita: You can, first of all, to reach out to the organisers of the different WordCamps, if you’d like to sponsor a WordCamp. You can go to central.wordcamp.org, and then you’ll find a listing of the upcoming WordCamps. And you’ll find, let’s say, in July, there’s a Uganda Websites competition. If you click on it, you can now find your way to the sponsor’s page, and sponsor directly from there.

If you’d like to connect with the teachers association that has been behind all the efforts of all these outreach program in spreading WordPress to schools, you can first reach out to them on Twitter. They are @ICTTeachersUG, and their site is ictteachersug.net. And lastly, if you’d like me to connect you with, because there are so many other people involved, if you’d like me to connect you with, let’s say, whoever is leading the next meetup, or the next WordCamp, you can find me on LinkedIn as Abraham Waita, and I’ll be happy to link you.

[00:20:36] Nathan Wrigley: I will make sure that all of those links go into the show notes. So if you go to wptavern.com/podcast, you’ll be able to find the episode there, and you can click on the links and hopefully connect with Abraham.

Thank you so much for chatting to me today. What an impressive community you’ve got over there. I hope it continues, and I hope you manage to teach more children as the days, and weeks, and months go by, all about the virtues of WordPress. Thank you very much.

[00:20:58] Abraham Waita: Thank you Nathan.