Knitting Is Coding | Lindiwe Matlali | TEDxBeaconStreet

Gender inequality continues in many communities around the world even as we emphasize messages of women’s empowerment. An integral part of empowering women, however, is showing them that tasks traditionally labelled as “women’s work” are complex and important, and hold many of the same technical challenges as anything men do. Lindiwe Matlali's "Knit 2 Code" program in South Africa connects knitting to computer science, revealing that grandmothers can teach a new generation the skills of the future. Lindiwe is the Founder and CEO of Africa Teen Geeks a non-profit organisation that teach school children and unemployed youth how to code. She holds a Bcom degree from the University of Cape Town and recently completed a General Management Programme at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). She is currently studying towards MS in Technology Management from Columbia University in New York as well as a Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Stanford University. Her numerous accolades includes Young Business awards top 3 finalist, Mail & Guardian Top young South Africans 2014 , TechWomen Fellow 2017 and Recently Named Innov8tive Magazine Top 50 Visionary Women in #Tech To Watch in 2017. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx