Last week, women
and girls from all around Africa convened in the beautiful city of Accra, Ghana
from the 13th-14th September, 2016. This time around it
was not a fashion or beauty expo. It was the Africa Summit on women and girls
in technology. The 1st of its kind.
The essence of
the summit organised by the Web Foundation and the Alliance for Affordable
Internet (A4Ai) was to create a platform where women in technology could
deliberate on how to create effective ICT policies to champion the cause of
women and girls. The organisers spared no expense not just in the amazing venue
at the Labadi Beach Hotel but also in congregating prolific speakers to tackle
almost every area including women’s rights online, digital entrepreneurship,
digital education and skills, gender responsive policies etc. It was a time for learning, networking and taking incredible selfies. lol
You can see the
beautiful pictures from the conference here.
For me, some of
the resonating themes across all the conversations of #techwomenafrica is that
we need to create safe spaces online but most importantly ensure that the
internet becomes a safe public space for all women, create compelling content
designed for women to encourage them to come online, ensure that girls are
encouraged to study STEM subjects, the need for women to collaborate and to
scale successful initiatives.
In attendance
were Omobola Johnson, Former Nigerian Minister of Communications Technology,
who had to join via Skype due to travel constraints, Dorothy Gordon, Director
General AITIKACE, Mrs Izeduwa Derek Briggs Director of East and South Africa of
UN Women, Ms Anne Githuku-Shongwe, Director of Southern African countries of UN
Women, Angelique Weeks, Head of Liberia’s Communications Regulator among
others. We also had Foster Ofusu of the AFDB, a declared womanist at the
conference
The Web
Foundation and A4Ai team get two thumbs up for an absolutely engaging and well
organised conference. I am totally looking forward to the next conference. PS-
we want city tours next time though, lol.
Of course,
wearing different hats, not just as an ICT policy lawyer but a media person, my
mission at the conference would not have been complete if i did not speak to a
few of the amazing women who were at the conference, to learn a thing or two
from their stories and how we can empower women through ICT.
ANNE
GITHUKU SHONGWE
Director of the UN Women for Southern African
countries
CEO of Afroes Transformational Games, a company that
builds mobile game-based learning platforms out of South Africa and Kenya, beautiful and youthful Anne
has worked across the developmental world, with a 13 year stint at UNDP. She is
now one of those piloting affairs at UN Women to empower women and bridge the
gender divide through technology
Why is it so important for the UN women that African
women should get empowered through technology?
UN Women is
about girls and women so we are the agency of the United Nations that deals
with gender equality and women’s empowerment. We have to be part and parcel of
all the different initiatives that even has the slight possibility of
empowering young women and girls. Technology mirrors what happens offline. If women
have rights offline then technology becomes a tool for women to engage, if
women don’t have rights online, technology becomes a tool they can use to
campaign for their rights. So we see a whole world of opportunity for scaling
work where we see women we can reach them through their handsets, we can reach
them through the internet, to build digital skills and education, to know what
their rights are, we can reach them to enable themselves to design their own
journeys and enterprises. So we prioritise technology and innovation
The real story
is that last year the SDG was agreed on by the entire world. Goal 5 is specific
to gender equality. Goal 5B is an indicator is specific to ICT rights and
enabling women to be empowered through technology. So that’s our business
We have biases offline that prevent women from
achieving gender equality online. Why will ICT make it any different?
It is true. ICT
mirrors what happens in society but if women want to physically campaign for
their rights, they have way too many barriers in their families and society and
the way they treat women in general. The opportunity that online offers or that
ICT offers is there is some level of anonymity. If they need anonymity, they
can collaborate with women anywhere in the world by linking up to social media
or finding organisations that work with them. Then they can work with others in
less precarious situations than they are to be able to project their voice. So the
empowerment that technology offers is greater than if they did not have
technology. During this summit, we have had specific examples of this. Amira from
Egypt was sharing about how they have been able to build a massive campaign
against SGM in Egypt. They would never have been able to do this had they been
offline. So they use social media and technology to build that campaign. There have
been huge issues of access and affordability so not all women are online so i don’t
want to make this seem like its a panacea or a perfect solution. In some
countries, its just 20-30% that are online but even those 20-30% need to be
able to have the tool for their own agency. Some of the work that the Web
Foundation is doing that we are supporting is to be able to create affordable
internet for women so they have more access. To find ways to encourage government
to make the internet free and available all over the country not just for their
right but also for the opportunities they can build in terms of economy and
business
What do you mean when you say women need to think big
and stop scraping the ground?
I’m a digital entrepreneur
myself and i have run a company and as i ran this company, i started out with
very cautious steps. I wasn’t sure whether it would be considered good enough
or a mainstream business. I was very cautious about how i designed this business.
Then i began to learn that actually the business that i have has the potential
to change the way education works. The platform i built as part of Afroes is
the platform that will take the game type of learning, it’s called gamification
as a way to teach young people real skills, life skills. So for instance these
issues about security and identity, teach them this by giving them an
experience in the form of a game so it’s not something that you will sit down
and take a test. Its something that you will engage in as an experience and it
becomes internalised much faster. My vision is to change how life skills are
taught in schools throughout Africa. But i did not start out thinking i could do
this. So every way that i have designed my business is thinking small- If i
could just get the contract and pay 5 workers next month. But if you look at
companies like Face book and Google, Iroko in Nigeria, it’s mostly men behind
them. They think huge scale. How are we going to reach every Diasporan in
Africa, how are we going to reach every Nigerian? And because of this they
design it for scale. They then find partners who work with them to scale. We are
so insular in the way we look and i think this is where we fail ourselves and i
think we need to start banding together and stop trying to do things in our own
little enclaves and then we need to ask ourselves who are the partners we think
with so that we think and reach scale. And finally, we need to be bold in how we
look for money. We are too scared in how we look for money. We look of for small
amount of money. I have sat with many men who are enterprenuers. I will be
happy to get a 100,000 dollars. They are sitting there and saying that my goal
is 5 million dollars and they learn there and they learn how to fake it even if
they don’t necessarily have the skill. They figure out how to do that. It seems
to me almost characteristic of us
But there is a glass ceiling for women to break
through. The men make it easy for themselves by serving their own interests
The eco system
doesn’t exist in support of women but who is going to create the eco system for
us? Its not going to happen because we are women and they are kind to us. We as
women have to band in together to create this eco system. Yesterday, Ethel Cofie
was sharing how she built this Women in technology network. And she decided in
January, i want to have events all over the world on women in technology in
Africa in one week. She designed this phenomenal vision and already starting in
2 weeks she has an event that is going to have simultaneously in China in Germany,
in Ghana in Nigeria, in Kenya and South Africa. That’s thinking big, that’s
daring to go there, but of course by the time you see her get there, she has
been scraping the floor backwards for many years and is slowly building the
confidence to step out. So we need more Ethel Cofies’ who dare to think at that
size and there are not many of us. With the technology environment and the
group of entrepreneurs we have we really need to build this ecosystem that is
also financially friendly to us and built into how we structure our businesses
because they are largely social impact. Not just selling a piece of paper for
it but because it is going to transform children’s lives.
IZEDUWA DEREK-BRIGGS
Director UN Women, East and South Africa
Powerful and forceful
are just a few word to describe this trail blazer. She is currently the Director
of East and South Africa for UN Women and would love to see where technology
helps connect women to ways in which they can develop and equip themselves not
just in her native Nigeria but all across Africa
There is a huge gender divide in digital world. What can
we do to bridge that gap?
First we need to
demystify the fact that women cannot do science subject to get into technology.
Demystify it. Let the women do the science subjects. That is the starting
point. Our cultural values and socialisation actually hinders our reaching our
full potential. Women need to be trained just like boys and there needs to be
proactive ways of addressing the challenges that women face in technology.
In terms of policy, what would you recommend?
We listened to
former minister Omobola Johnson and during her tenure we made a lot of strides
in Nigeria in terms of policies. So i think its to implement the policies.
Nigerian policies are gender responsive so we need to implement them.
Implementation has always been a problem in Nigeria. So
how do we get them to implement?
Well it not just
in Nigeria. It’s all over Africa. To get people to implement the policies it’s
to make the policies realistic. Most times, the policies are cut and paste. We ask
for things our governments cannot provided but if it is realistic, we have
civil society who should break down those policies into implementation plans
and set targets and indicators. Then civil society can be a watch dog and
monitor those policies and their implementation?
What would you expect to see flowing from the
conference in the next 2 years?
This conference
should come out with a difference. We are talking about going to scale. If we
want to measure impact, we cannot measure impact by training 10 children in digital
literacy. That is just a drop in the ocean. I will like to see a project where
we train 100 schools for instance. In Nigeria we have so many schools. How many
of them are digitally literate? We have universities where people study
computer science and they have never seen a laptop. All these little projects
are good as pilots. But we need to move away from pilots. We are looking at the
SDGs now and we are looking at 2030. We need to step up. We need to step up our
game.
MARIEME JAMME
Founder,
IamtheCode
You meet
Mariemme and you feel you have met a force, a movement. Strong, beautiful,
driven and compassionate are just a few words to describe this Senegalese-born
British CEO who is extremely passionate about business solutions through
technology and particularly teaching young girls to code. Mariemme infects you
with her energy and love for coding just by sitting beside her. Seeing how many
times her name was mentioned by other speakers at the conference, i knew she
would be my first conference interview.
How did you come about the name IamtheCode?
I was in the
bathroom with my son and i was doing lots of work and said mummy is really
tired with all of the work i’m doing. And i said if i go there, what do i say
what do you think? And he said mummy you are really my legend and you are the
code. Mummy you know you are the code for success. You have suffered so much
and you did this. I went to the bathroom and i was thinking, i am the code, I am
the code .org and i googled ‘i am the code.org’ and the name was available. The
next day i went to see my team and i said everything i have been doing around
stem and technology, i want you to design something quickly that will talk to
young women and girls and my guys started designing the website and said what
do you want to put? We don’t want to be a campaign or women and girls program.
That’s exactly
how it was created
What is your story?
I grew up in
Senegal. My mother is an aristocrat but she gave us away at birth. I grew up in
an orphanage in a village about 3 hours from Dakar. At 15, i was sexually trafficked to Paris. I was a
young prostitute at 15. I didn’t have any schooling or any education at all. My
book is coming out very soon. In Paris i was raped by 2 white guys. I ran away
from the lady’s place and i was picked up by the Police in France. My life
started when the police picked me up. I was at the YMCA which is like a refuge
and i got mentored by a Moroccan lady who had been helping me and supporting
me. At the age of 18 she said what do you want to do? I said i want to learn
English. There was an exchange with the YMCA in France with the one in UK. That’s
how i went there and i was doing cleaning jobs, bars, restaurant, doing any
sort of work no education at all and then i paid for my education got admitted
to a college, started doing temping jobs
How did you get into coding?
When i was in
the Village, i was really into making stuff. I really didn’t learn coding at
first, i was interested in technology and business solution. As i built my
career in tech working for big tech companies, i was interested in how business
solutions can help improve lives. Then i got into writing about Africa and
getting interested in tech and innovation. I have always been a person who
invents and writes and doing things. What i would say to a young woman here is
to be confident. We need to collaborate. It very important to work together
You changed from STEM to STEAMD?
Because Art and
design is very important in the whole manufacturing industry and fashion and
technology work together so if you don’t invest into STEM art and design, it
doesn’t make sense really. Ghana has fashion but no one investing into art and
design. Designers in Africa are intuitive and not practical, for the
manufacturing industry in Ghana to grow you need to add technology to fashion
and that is how you create jobs
You created the KANO computer kit. What is it all
about?
It is a
collective invention. It’s a small computer kit for everyone in the world,
every single child to have access to something very simple to use to learn to
code without any fuss literally. You don’t have to be a nerd. Comes with
applications and everything
Did you make it yourself?
I made it with a
friend of mine so its an African design and the curriculum is African
curriculum. It is localised content. The curriculum is for code clubs and for
teachers to put in the curriculum as well so its just a way of learning.
FARAI GUNDAN
CONTRIBUTOR AT FORBES, BLOGGER AND FOUNDER OF TWO TECH
START-UPS
Farai’s
enthusiasm for life and entrepreneurship is contagious. She is a Zimbabwean-born
Harvard Mason Fellow, contributor with ForbesAfrica and Young Global Leader – World
Economic Forum (WEF). A beautiful
and bubbly tech entrepreneur herself and one who constantly interacts and
engages top entrepreneurs across other fields, we caught up with her on how
women can become successful tech entrepreneur
How did you get into tech entrepreneurship seeing your
background is in journalism?
It started with
me sitting on the couch and talking to Oprah Winfrey about education and
African girls and how important it was for them to get an education and that
led to me getting into the media in the US and reporting live from Hollywood on
the red carpet and covering the Golden globes and Oscars etc. A lot of what i
did back then, we did it for television but we also did it for You tube as well
as for my blog because i just felt we had so much content. But the content i
had for my blog was really from the perspective of an African Woman talking about
all these amazing events, whether Oscars and Golden globes but what it meant
for us as Africans and that led me down the track of the digital space.
Traditional media has been really changing and you have to embrace the digital
aspect of it so for me, i took the time to really learn the digital space as a
way of really setting myself apart. Part of it was blogging and i became one of
the top bloggers especially in South Africa where my blog became really well
known because of the content from the US. From there, i started writing for
Forbes. Forbes came calling. Going back to entertainment which is what i was
doing for my blog, everyone started doing gossip and entertainment and it just
became very crowded. So how do you set yourself apart. So for me when Forbes
came calling, i just realised that business was an area where i could set
myself apart and where i could really excel and where i could really
distinguish myself. And i really enjoyed it. I was writing about the Dangotes,
Folorunsho Alakijas, Wale Tinubu’s, Tony Elumelu’s, Patrice Motsepe of South Africa,
Strive Masiyiwa, Mohammed Dewji of Tanzania but really celebrating our stories
because our challenges had been much storied. Everyone has written about our
challenges but no one has written about our successes. I think Aliko Dangote is
a success. Like him or not, i think he is a success. I mean he is the richest
black man in the world, richer than Oprah Winfrey. So that is how i
distinguished myself and from there became one of the top writers at Forbes.
And it was the same year i was named a Young Global Leader by the World
Economic Forum which in itself is amazing because it just exposes you to people
at the top of their field in whatever country or whatever region then you can
learn from them. So whether its my Asian colleagues or south American,
European, African for sure. Wale Tinubu, Kola Karim, all those guys are YGLs
and so really learning from them and leveraging off each other strengths and to
take our individual projects to the next level. But digital was also very critical.
Also because i’m based in the US so if i connect with Africa, its through
digital. That’s how i stay visible and stay relevant on the continent. So
technology has always been critical to what i do even now that i’m doing my 2nd
masters at the Havard University Kennedy School of Government. Again we are talking
about digital but now we are talking about it from the perspective of policies,
creating policies and regulations that will shape the ecosystem and enable us to
grow. I think we have the potential to grow. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook
was in Nigeria and in West Africa. So for me the question is what is in it for
us. Why can’t we come up with Face book created for us and by for us because
the market is there. So that is why digital is critical to me because it
enables us to connect because we are by nature communal people. That’s why we
are big on Whatsapp. Even my US friends don’t know what Whatsapp is. We like to
stay connected because we are communal people
There are complaints that women don’t have enough
compelling content to go online. What can be done about this?
There is the Forbes
20 most powerful African young women- looking for women that are trailblazers,
that are pioneers at the top of their careers, realising that we are our
greatest champions, our greatest trailblazers. It tells me that we do exist and
we should be celebrating ourselves not only in regional or local platforms but
also on the global stage. There is a desire and people in the US want to hear
about the bright stories from the continent of Africa and not just the usual
suspects, i love Lupita but there are other African women that we should be
telling their stories as well because there is really plenty of room for all of
us at that stage.
For women who want to get into digital
entrepreneurship, how should they do so?
You need to
really understand what you are getting yourself into. Being an entrepreneur is
not for toddlers, its not for the weak hearted. So its a tough environment to
be in, more so in Africa so you have to know that this is your calling and you
will stick to it for the long run. And really study your domain, take the
necessary classes, get the necessary skill set, the tools. If it is coding, get
into coding, if it is networking with the right people, network with the right
investors. For me it meant getting into Harvard University and getting my
masters in public administration because i wanted to understand the policy.
It’s easy for you as a business person to build your business but if there is a
wrong policy by government, you will get discouraged. For me it is building my
business and knowing the right framework in which i am building my company. So
we have a consultancy its a communications, media and strategy consultancy that
will really help companies, governments brand themselves and position
themselves as elite performers, as potential leaders o their various countries.
I have 2 clients i’m working with from Nigeria. But now to understand that now
is the time to create business for us
What kind of policies do you think we need?
We need at the
basic level STEM education- science, math for our girls at a very young age.
Certainly, we need to expose them to having something as basic as having
devices whether it’s a laptop or a tablet. I was talking to some participants
saying that in their country, there is push back from the government because
they don’t understand how they are going to use these devices, because they use
that at a political tool. It has to be introduced at a young age and get our girls
to be comfortable. My niece sleeps with her iPad and she is in Canada so i want
that exposure to start at a young age. Also introduce some form of content that
speaks to what we have done. My personal mentor is Folorunsho Alakija. So i
used to have Oprah Winfrey as a mentor in my head. Folorunsho Alakija, i can touch her, feel her, i spend time with her, i
can call her on the phone and she will take my call and answer my questions. We
need that for the younger girls. We need to make ourselves very accessible and
approachable to them at a young age and they become very comfortable with both
failure and successes.
Educational reform
across the continent is important because the market is not absorbing our
graduates. If you look at most countries eg South Africa, 85% unemployment yet
i mean we have a highly educated population it means there is something wrong
with their education system so we need to reform in terms that we are sending
our people to vocational schools. What does the country need? It needs
manufacturing to be revitalised and revamped. So educate your people in that
area. Agriculture is huge on the continent and we are not taking advantage of
that. We can be using technology to enhance our agriculture. We are not
thinking comprehensively. We get caught up with the Face book and the Snap Chats
because Americans are into that but how does that solve our own problems. It’s
not helping to connect the farmer to the market. We should be thinking of home
grown solutions to our problems and i’m not discountenancing Face book, those
have a place for them but where are the solutions for us and what is our
competitive advantage so that as a global market we are competing effectively.
We could be really leading in agriculture, all aspect so fit from growing the
crops and the technologies that fuels the commodities training you need to
connecting farmers. So many ways we can innovate within that space and be
market leaders but we are not doing that because some people don’t find it
attractive.
For women who want to blog on the digital space what
should they do to get it right?
You have to find
something that distinguishes you otherwise, its herd mentality and you are not
doing anything creative. For me i had to exit that space and go into business.
There was no one as an African woman who was telling our stories successfully
from a business perspective. So at editorial meetings I’m fighting for us
because i am one of us. For women in technology, who is the leading editor in
women in technology at eh top publications. That’s an area we can think about.
Then you begin to list top 10 tech women in Africa, top 10 tech companies out
of Africa. Someone can come in and fill that space. You can become the leading
voice. You have to think creatively as well and not just entertainment and
gossip.
Does the content
really celebrate us? For me i couldn’t go to sleep talking about who Genevieve
Nnaji was. I don’t care about all of that but i do care about who is solving
our road issues, our infrastructure issues, how are we coming up with ways of
connecting our fashion designers to the market and to expose our fashion
designers to the rest of the world
RACHEL SIBANDE
CEO and Founder, MHub Malawi
30 years old,
mother of 3 who is as deeply passionate about her family as she is about
technology and helping young Malawians develop advanced technical skills.
Meeting her at the conference, we spoke on a range of issues from technology to
even choosing the right man (after all, how can we have a women’s summit
without discussing men too, lol!). This is one lady who has a lot of depth in
technology and beyond.
What is Mhub about?
It is Malawi’s
first technology Hub. It is an innovation hub and an incubator space. We are a
social enterprise. What that means is that we develop technology solution for
profit, we develop websites, manage technology deployments and make money out
of that and we plow back our profits for social good. Some of the social good
programmes we do is that we train children how to code, how to develop games,
mobile applications and animations with the hope they can grow up into a
generation of young people that can embrace careers in science, tech,
engineering and mathematics.
We train girls
to code. For very obvious reasons, there are very few women in STEM and so we
hope we can leverage that and increase the number of female participation in
STEM o we train girls how to develop mobile applications using Google’s MIT app
inventor. We have trained over 93 girls at the moment and we have extended the
training beyond tech training to train the girl on social entrepreneurship
skills. Creative thinking and design workshops
We train young
people in general with skills in entrepreneurship. We incubate emerging entrepreneurs.
After training them in entrepreneurship, when they establish their own entrepreneurship
ventures and they need a space where they can grow their own ideas and get
mentorship and some place where they can call an office or also link to
influential client. So we do that as a part of our incubation program. We are
located in Malawi’s capital city Lilongwe. We have a 200 sqm space there and we
have another space in Malawi’s commercial capital Blantyre in partnership with
UNICEF and the University of Malawi
What made you set up the Mhub which is similar to Nigeria’s
co-creation Hub?
I had been
working for 6 year. I started off as a teacher in a high school, taught in the
University. I went on to work in different portfolios in the development world,
worked on USAID funded projects. By the time i was leaving, i had ascended to
become country director of the USAID funded project but my passion was still in
technology and i wanted to see more talented young Malawians taking up careers
in technology. i was not satisfied with the level of aptitude and technical
skills like programming in Malawi’s young people. That’s what really motivated
me to set up the tech hub so that it could be a ground for training young
Malawians with advanced skills in programming so that we could develop tech
solutions that solve our local problems and hopefully, those solutions will
transcend solve global problems.
It is important for me that we adapt things to suit
our local need in Africa. What are the things you think technology can do to
help Africa develop and move to the next level?
Technology is a
wide space for me. You can pretty much fit in anything, it depends on what you
want. You can develop solutions to problems in the health sector, eg you want
to enhance adherence to treatment for TB or HIV patients, using technology, you
could send them reminders everytime they have to take their medication, look at
education already people are learning online, its taking up the barriers of
geographical distances, look at agriculture, farmers are learning new ways of
doing thing using videos, sharing information with other farmers or indeed
selling via online markets or sms. Its a wide board that can be used to solve a
multitude of African challenges but not just African problems. It really
depends on what you want to use it for
In Africa, where is the gap for the young people?
We have very
enthusiastic young people. If you look at data on population statistics, you
see that a majority of the African population are actually the youth. So we
have the human resource. Where we are lacking is the capacity to enhance the
technical skills to the youth. If we could train more young people in
technology, create conducive environments where they can develop tech
solutions, let them get the mentorship and support both technically and
financially to scale those applications they develop, i think it will be great.
Look at India, they export a lot of tech expertise to other countries because
of their youth that is very engaged in developing tech solutions
Ladies face a huge gender divide and gap. As a young
lady in tech making huge strides, what challenges do ladies face and how can we
bridge that gap?
Women are women
and men are men. When it comes to intellectual capabilities, both men and women
are capable. If we are looking for proof of consent there are women who have
done it in tech as well, the like of Grace Hoppers. I think where we are
lacking or where the challenge is, is on the socio-cultural perceptions. Of
things that women can do and things they think women cannot do. This is one of
the things that really hinges and brings the gap. My advice to young girls is
don’t internalise that, that i cannot do this because i am a woman, that i
cannot be in technology or engineering because i am a woman because that is
false. There are loads of women who have does this. Look at Marie Curie, 2
times Nobel Prize winner in 2 different sciences but she is a woman. She is the only person who has managed to
accomplish that feat. It is possible and it can be done. For me that i the
paramount challenge that women face. If one can tell themselves that it doesn’t
matter that i am a woman or what society thinks, that women cannot make it in
STEM, they are taking a huge step and the rest follows. We need political will
to exercise education, the girl child can also access education and that the
environment is conducive and palatable for the girl child
Personally as a young woman who is the founder of MHub
what challenges do you face?
I am somebody
that will always look at a challenge as an opportunity and ultimately, it
become difficult to remember challenges or problems. One of the things i keep
facing each day and i kind of enjoy getting through it is that people will look
at you that you are a woman, slender
stature, small and they start to think what will someone mall, tiny and young
bring to the table. Over the years, i have learnt to prove the point that
dynamites come in small package.
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