International Girls in ICT Day, 2019.
Caption taken during an all Girl Maths Camp to celebrate Africa Science Week in 2018
On 25th April 2019, AMI joins ITU (the United Nations agency on information and communication) in celebrating International Girls in ICT Day). Women who are working or interning at AMI have played key roles as programmers, data analysts, educators and as part of documentation teams. We’d like to celebrate these and other women who are making marks in the different ICT sectors, and beyond.
The ICT sector presents significant opportunities for women in Africa. It’s predicted to become a very big portion of the job market in sectors such as Agriculture, Climate Change Adaptation, Education, Financial Services among other sectors. For example, our own African Data Initiative is currently focusing on sectors such as Education, Agriculture, Transparency in Government Procurement and Climate. We’ve developed an easy to use software; R-Instat that’s currently being used to teach Statistics in both local and International Universities. It’s also used to analyze tonnes of data from Meteorological departments in countries such as Malawi and understand about transparency in government procurement in countries such as Tanzania, Ghana and Uganda.
There’s a need for more women to seize available opportunities equally as men but before that, all of us; individuals, the private sector, development organizations, and governments have to tackle the gender stereotypes and biases that prevent women from pursuing STEM-related fields.
And this must start early! Our initiatives such as Maths Camps, Africa Science Week, African Data Initiative, Africa Code Week activities and Digital Communities Initiatives have acted as platforms to encourage young girls to pursue STEM-related fields.
If ICT or rather STEAM will contribute to a huge portion of the job market in the future why not start preparing everyone now?
Written by Patrick Njoroge
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