{"id":381,"date":"2026-08-30T13:24:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T13:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/efiwe.com\/blog\/?p=381"},"modified":"2026-08-30T13:24:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T13:24:27","slug":"we-asked-41-girls-in-surulere-to-complete-191-coding-challenges-they-completed-12323","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/efiwe.com\/blog\/we-asked-41-girls-in-surulere-to-complete-191-coding-challenges-they-completed-12323\/","title":{"rendered":"We Asked 41 Girls in Surulere to Complete 191 Coding Challenges. They Completed 12,323."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Earlier this month, through our partnership with the Lagos State Government’s Education District IV, we brought Efiwe into the classrooms of New Era Girls’ School, Surulere. The assignment was simple. Complete all 191 HTML challenges on the platform.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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The awardees:<\/strong> Samiat, Jemima, Halima, Habeebat, Oluwanifemi, Ifeoluwa, Praise, Chidubem, Ayomide and Theresa.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

That was the whole brief. One course. One track. A clear finish line that we thought was ambitious for a first cohort in a public school with limited devices and unreliable connectivity. They blew past it in a way we did not plan for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What actually happened<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By the end of the program, 41 girls had logged into Efiwe. Between them they completed 12,323 challenges<\/strong> and earned 1.87 million points<\/strong> across six different courses: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Tailwind, Python and SQL. Only one of those courses was assigned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how it broke down:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Course<\/th>Challenges in course<\/th>Girls who started<\/th>Girls who completed 100%<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
HTML<\/strong><\/td>191<\/td>41<\/td>21<\/td><\/tr>
CSS<\/strong><\/td>298<\/td>22<\/td>10<\/td><\/tr>
JavaScript<\/strong><\/td>488<\/td>13<\/td>4<\/td><\/tr>
Tailwind<\/strong><\/td>154<\/td>8<\/td>4<\/td><\/tr>
Python<\/strong><\/td>420<\/td>5<\/td>0 (top reached 117 challenges)<\/td><\/tr>
SQL<\/strong><\/td>251<\/td>1<\/td>0<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Twenty-one girls finished every single HTML challenge. That alone would have made the program a success. But then 22 of them opened CSS, a course with 298 challenges, more than half again as long as the one they had just finished. Ten of them cleared all 298. Then 13 opened JavaScript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JavaScript is the hardest track we have built: 488 challenges, ten levels, 27 badges, real programming logic rather than markup. Four girls completed all 488. Eight took on Tailwind and four finished all 154. Five opened Python, with one reaching 117 challenges in a 420-challenge course. And one girl, on her own, with nobody watching and no course assigned, opened SQL and started working through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody told them to keep going<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is the part we keep coming back to. There was no extra credit for CSS. No award for JavaScript. No teacher checking whether anyone had touched Python. The incentive structure of the program ended at HTML challenge 191. What happened after that was voluntary. It happened during break periods, after school, at home on shared phones, and in the gaps between other lessons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two girls each completed more than 1,200 challenges across the six courses. Several worked through more than 900. For context, that is more practice volume than most first-year computer science undergraduates accumulate in a semester. We did not design a program that produced this. We designed a program with a finish line and the girls decided the finish line was not the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why this matters more than the numbers<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There is a persistent assumption in conversations about technology education in Africa that the constraint is motivation. That young people, and girls in particular, need to be convinced that coding is for them, persuaded that it is worth their time, incentivised into caring. Our data from Surulere says the constraint was never motivation. It was access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These girls did not need a pep talk. They needed a tool that worked on the phone they already had, offline, in a classroom with no reliable internet, structured so that the next step was always obvious and always reachable. Once that existed, the motivation was already in the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is exactly what Efiwe was built for. Mobile-first, because that is the device that exists. Offline-capable, because connectivity in a Lagos public school is not something you can build a curriculum around. Broken into small challenges, because a 15-minute window between classes is a real unit of learning time and a 90-minute video lesson is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The girls at New Era did not use Efiwe the way we expected. They used it more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The awards<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This week we presented awards to the top three performers in HTML and medals to the top ten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awards<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n