In Senegal, there’s an app for protecting the environment

DAKAR ( Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Hunched over her laptop, eyes locked on the screen, Marième Seye listens to the step- by- step instructions given by her teacher.

The 18-year-old isn’t studying math or history, however. With 24 other Senegalese students, she is learning to develop a mobile app to raise awareness about the environment.

In small groups, the students develop apps focusing on environmental issues, in the format of their choice – such as a game, quiz or a platform to look up potentially unfamiliar terms, such as “endangered species.”

Seye has called her app “Weer Weeldé,” which means “a healthy planet for a healthy life” in Wolof.

Users must choose which between four pictures – for example, a person drinking dirty water, another smoking, industrial fumes and people planting trees – to pick what represents the most positive contribution to the planet.

Choosing the correct image – in this case, tree planting – rewards the user with points, before all pictures appear with a caption explaining the dangers or benefits linked to the activities.

“I’m interested in developing a phone app because I use them all the time,” Seye told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The three-day workshop, organized by the Goethe Institute and mJangale, a Senegalese after-school program, aims to improve students’ literacy, numeracy, and foreign language skills.

Christelle Scharff, cofounder of mJangale and professor of computer science at Pace University in New York, teaches participants to use MIT App Inventor – a dragand-drop tool allowing users to create a basic phone app.

The students follow her every click on a computer screen projected on the wall.