Indonesia to make coding part of school curriculum next year

• High school students to learn how to develop apps
• Telkomsel kicks off annual app development competition

(L-R): MarkPlus founder and CEO Hermawan Kertajaya; Net TV founder and CEO Wishnutama; Infocomms Minister Rudiantara; Telkomsel president director Ririek Adriansyah; and Metra Digital Investama director Nicko Widjaja at the launch of NextDev 2016.

THE Indonesian Government will make coding part of the school curriculum next year, according to its Minister of Communications and Information Technology Rudiantara.

Saying that Indonesia has a shortage of coding expertise, this move would be needed to enable the country’s vision of creating 1,000 startups by 2020, and making the republic a ‘digital economy.’

“[Minister of Education] Pak Anies Baswedan has said that coding would be of the curriculum starting from next year,” Rudiantara said.

“High school students will get basic coding knowledge to develop apps,” he added on the sidelines of a press conference in Jakarta to launch PT Telekomunikasi Seluler Indonesia’s (Telkomsel) second annual NextDev competition.

Positive social impact

Meanwhile, Telkomsel’s NextDev competition aims to get young developers to create mobile apps that would have a positive social impact.

As with last year’s competition, the focus is on smart city solutions, but the scope has been widened into four pillars: E-government, smart economy, smart environment, and smart living through the implementation of technology.

The company is looking for solutions covering sectors like agriculture, maritime, small and medium enterprise (SME), energy, government, tourism, health, education and transportation.

“We encourage more developers from outside cities, as we see that rural problems have some relevance to city problems,” Telkomsel president director Ririek Adriansyah told the press conference.

“We have also expanded from 10 to 20 cities this year – last year, more than 500 apps were submitted, and we are optimistic that this year we can get even more solutions for cities nationwide,” he added.

NextDev 2016 will only be open to contestants within the ages of 18 and 30, and will run from May to October. A total of 20 teams will be chosen as finalists, and they will be provided with mentoring as well training in coding, marketing, communications, and monetisation.

NextDev 2015 winners included apps as Jejakku, which promotes travel to destinations; and GandengTangan, a crowdfunding service for social projects.