French coding school Le Wagon to launch in Dubai offering courses for Dh30,000

At the end of a nine-week programme students will have developed at least two apps

Students study coding and app building at the Paris campus of Le Wagon. Courtesy: Le Wagon

A coding boot camp will open in Dubai this September.

Le Wagon will offer its nine-week coding course at Dubai Knowledge Park, training beginners in the basics of software development.

Class sizes will be limited to 20 students and by the end of the programme, participants will have developed at least two apps.

Dubai is the first city in the Gulf to offer the boot camp.

The Gulf is by essence a dynamic, young and cosmopolitan region and that is exactly what Le Wagon is looking for

“The Gulf is by essence a dynamic, young and cosmopolitan region and that is exactly what Le Wagon is looking for,” said Charlotte Margus, the company’s UAE director.  “We want to take part in the expansion of the tech community here, with diverse people motivated to learn and grow.”

Boris Paillard, an ex-HSBC Trader, founded Le Wagon to teach bankers, consultants and financiers how to code. It now runs in 27 cities.

“From a professional standpoint, the Covid-19 situation also created a great opportunity as it reinforced the need for people to reinvent themselves," said Ms Margus. "They are looking for more mobility and for digital transformations, which are at the heart of the ‘new normal’.

“The value added of Le Wagon is to teach students the tech skills and the entrepreneurial mindset they need to thrive. This specificity of Le Wagon’s bootcamp perfectly fits with the UAE’s National Agenda to instill an entrepreneurial culture in schools.”

The Dh30,000 programme includes lifetime access to online lessons and exercises and its alumni network.

The UAE government has pushed citizens and residents to take up coding with education and job placement programmes that support the a national strategy of developing a knowledge-based economy, technology and science sectors.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, launched the One Million Arab Coders initiative in 2017 to give free training to a million Arab over three years.

More than 375,000 people registered for its first edition, where where participants received training by staff from Facebook, Microsoft and other companies.

The initiative was intended to spark the imagination of Arab youth and prepare them for an industry that is expected to generate hundreds of thousands of jobs in the future.

Coding boot camps started around 2012 and have grown into an industry worth Dh1.135 billion, according to Course Report, a programming course directory.

There are projected to be 28 million coders in the world by 2023 but a projected skills shortfall is predicted and governments are encouraging youth to take up coding, with nine countries in the EU teaching coding in primary schools.

Educational institutes are scheduled to reopen in the UAE from August 30 with precautionary health measures in place, including mandatory mask wearing and distanced seating.

Le Wagon’s coding course will begin on September 27, with classes running from 9am until 7pm.

Students work at their laptops at Le Wagon coding boot camp in Paris. Marlene Awaad / Bloomberg