Toure Abdourahmane ’12 and Lady-Asaph Lamptey ’12, recent graduates at Ashesi, tell us about their senior year projects which were aimed at expanding interest in programming by creating Twi and French programming languages for Ghana and Francophone countries in Africa.
In his second semester at Ashesi in 2009, Toure Abdourahmane ’12 took his first programming class. According to him, he had an initial struggle with the class, not because he had never programmed before, but because he had to do all his programming in English – a language that he was still learning. “Coming from a Francophone country, I found that I learned programming slower than most of my classmates because I was not as comfortable with English as they were.”
So when Toure had to start a project for his senior year at Ashesi, he decided to focus on a project that would help solve the problem he had in his freshman year – he would recreate an entire programming language in French. “Where most students elsewhere are able to learn programming really early, we are not able to because we have to first learn to read and write in English. But I do not think that language should be a barrier for programmers.”
Toure teamed up with one of his classmates, Lady-Asaph Lamptey ’12, to create a French version of the Java programming language – one that would serve as a model for creating French versions of several other programming languages in the future. But when their project supervisor suggested they include an indigenous language, Lady and Toure decided to not only do a French version, but a Twi one as well.
“We learned that Unicode Standards for the Twi language had already been created, and so we could easily work with it,” Lady said. But while the French version would be Java-based, the Twi version, they discovered, would be a lot easier to develop on Python. “Python is a lot more readable than most of its alternatives, meaning translating it into Twi would be easier. So it was the best language to use for our Twi experiment.”
Now, one year on, Lady and Toure are thinking of ways to test and expand their project. Toure plans to return to Guinea this year and work with high schools in developing the project. Lady also plans to engage with the students in Berekuso, where Ashesi’s new home is, to see how a Twi programming language can boost interest in and teach skills for learning computer science.
“Programming is a sure way to sharpen your problem solving skills, and we think it would be a huge advantage for students if they can learn programming early,” say Lady and Toure. “We hope that without the language barrier, more students can engage with programming, and all the excitement it comes with. As we expand this project over time, many more Africans will hopefully develop an interest in programming and computer science.”