Written by Chris Matthews | From Motherboard

Martha Chumo was preparing for an adventure. Her application was complete, the interview a success, crowdfunders had helped with donations and her place on the three-month course was confirmed: Next stop, New York’s prestigious Hacker School. 

But after complications attaining a tourist visa, two failed applications at the American Embassy—even with letters of recommendation from the institution and other technology firms in New York—the 19-year-old’s dreams of coding in America were dashed before they had begun.

“When I left the embassy that morning, I was thinking, I have this $5,000 belonging to people from all over the world and I told them I am going to New York, and then suddenly I am not allowed to go,” she said.

That was June 2013. Fast-forward nine months to the steps outside the American Embassy in Nairobi, and a phone call to a friend was to kickstart a very different journey.    

“After the second visa was rejected I was feeling extremely frustrated, so I rang up my friend and said, ‘You know what? I am going to bring Hacker School to Kenya,’” Chumo said. 

And so was born the Nairobi Dev School: a space where Kenya’s connected generation can go to plug in and learn the art of coding, programming, app development, and entrepreneurship. It’s just the latest emblem of the evolving economic and social interests in a country where the tech sector is growing rapidly.

Read more at Motherboard