Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) Accra User Group, a community of people interested in cloud technologies, has offered a day’s capacity building workshop in Accra to introduce developers and cloud technology enthusiasts to serverless technologies available on AWS’ cloud platform.
AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon providing on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.
The over 50 participants and education partners of AWS, drawn from Ghana Tech Lab and Azubi Africa, were taken through building serverless applications and tested serverless applications in the cloud against production resources using AWS SAM Accelerate.
Speaking on the rationale for the AWS Accra Workshop, Veliswa Boya, Senior Developer Advocate at AWS said, “today’s workshop in Accra is for anyone interested in cloud technology and newly certified AWS practitioners looking to continue their learning”.
The former AWS Community Hero and first woman out of Africa to be named an AWS Hero mentioned that the Ghana meetup is to leverage technological knowhow to change the world and lives. “We at AWS believe no one should be left behind in what I call the tech revolution and that includes technologies like cloud, machine learning etc. I have a passion for Africa, believe in the talent that Africa has; I advocate for developers from Africa, and for opportunities in visibility here and beyond our borders.”
According to Cheikh Mahaman, a Solution Architect at AWS Sub-Saharan Africa with over 12 years of experience in the technology industry, he was fortunate to start his career working as a software developer, progressed to software developer manager, then a Solution Architect.
“Our coming here to connect with AWS Ghana User Group is about discussing what they are doing on AWS, the challenges and how AWS can address those gaps; we are privileged to be helping the Ghana team upscale exponentially.”
Sharing his growth story, Rosius Ndimofor, Software Developer at Serverless Guru and first AWS Serverless Hero from Africa said, “I started my career building desktop, web, and mobile apps for various customers for 8 years. In 2020, a friend of mine and co-organizer of the Douala (Cameroon) AWS User Group introduced me to AWS and I got hooked after the first meetup. I started learning as much as he could about building AWS serverless applications while sharing newly acquired knowledge.”
Rosius is particularly interested in serverless services under compute and application integration layers.
Bishop Akpabli, an Arbutus Technical Associate and participant for the workshop, said “This program exposed me to the practical aspects of using the AWS services. “I wish to explore the other tools available on AWS because it’s a cool thing to write your programs using any framework and hosting it using any AWS services. I am ready to delve deeper.”
Marine Houmeau, Regional Program Lead AWS Restart called on Ghanaian youth to take advantage of the 12-week intensive Restart education programs on fundamentals of IT, fundamentals of the cloud; practice with lab, .to get training, certification and employment opportunities
“We made a five-year commitment to train 29 million people in cloud skills development worldwide and by far we have 45 countries delivering restart. In the places where we are delivering restart, we have successfully developed talents matching employer expectation and opportunity for the unemployed to get skills and upscale.
Tolulope Oke, Global DEI Customer Engagement Leadership at AWS said AWS celebrates the differences of its employees, partners and customers through diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
“We constantly work with customers by partnering programs of individuals and communities that align with our values on capacity building and social responsibility.”
Led by Edwin Nikoi, founder; and Emmanuel Koomson, User Group Leader, the AWS Accra community, meets regularly to learn about AWS services, share ideas and answer questions on cloud, job offers, programmes to upskill their cloud knowledge and networking opportunities.
