A call has been made for women who are experts in ICT to mentor the young women who are interested in the sub-sector and tech companies urged to give women preference for internships so as they build their capacity to make positive impacts in the sub-sector.
This is as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, GIZ restated its commitments to continue to support the ICT/e-commerce value chain actors in Plateau State so they can increase income and provide employment opportunities.
The GIZ encouraged young women to pay attention and take up a career path in the ICT sub-sector to bridge the huge gender gap in the sub-sector.
Speaking in Jos, Plateau State during a three-day awareness workshop on Women in Tech: Strategies for Narrowing Digital Gender Gap and Inclusive Capacity Building/Technical Support for ICT/E-Commerce Value Chain Actors for Increased Income and Employment in Plateau State organized by GIZ with Greg & Co ICT Ltd, diverse resource persons called for inclusion to encourage more women participation in the sub-sector.
Christopher Nwadike, a consultant for Greg & Co ICT Ltd stated that the objectives of the workshop were to “provide leadership and capacity-building exchanges/linkages for female techies for growing and maintaining a successful MSME in ICT/e-commerce value chain.
“Improve employment perspective/linkages for young women across GIZ-SEDIN ICT/e-commerce value chain States; develop a female mentorship network with female executives and role models and build a community in Jos as a sustainable plan for continued engagement.”
Giving an overview of the GIZ-SEDIN programme: Focus, approach and partners, Hauwa Mankilik, of the GIZ noted that the organization engages in capacity building to impart MSMEs operators with the knowledge to promote their businesses and create jobs as she stressed that value cannot be added in businesses without adequate knowledge.
She explained that the GIZ has been active in Nigeria since 1974 and has over 500 employees performing bilateral programmes at the regional and global levels and listed the focus of the organization to include “Economic development, vocational training and job creation, renewable energy and energy efficiency, migration and development, agricultural value chain development, peace, reconstruction and security, good governance, regional integration as well as public health.”
She added that the SEDIN programme implemented in Abia, Edo, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, Niger, Ogun, Oyo and Plateau States is a Pro-Poor Growth and Promotion of Employment in Nigeria Programme that aims at improving the employment and income situation of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).
Also, Yinka Onyerinde, the Chairman, of Nigeria Computers Society, Plateau State Chapter noted “This programme is aimed at developing ICT skills for female-led MSMEs on the Plateau. We have partnered with GIZ and others over the years to run training and usually when anything has to do with the ICT, especially regarding mitigating the gender divide, we are very much interested in providing our validation…”
He added that at the University of Jos Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies where he works, “We are running entrepreneurial skills to reduce unemployment, it is very sad that the majority of what is being done regarding technology is male-dominated, you find the females come for things like tailoring, hairdressing but when they are core technical vocational skills to be done, you find mostly men.
“This workshop is for us to strategize and see how we can encourage the female gender irrespective of socio-cultural issues to be more participatory as regards technology and STEM. As Nigeria prepares for the 4th industrial revolution the female gender has quite a large role to play…”
Tabitha Hris who spoke on promoting gender equality asked women to adopt ICT in their everyday work and she stated, “From our background, women are trained to be modest, take care of kids etc, and a lot of people think the ICT is for the males but they should know that ICT is like any other business.
“If you can go to school, you should be open to learning the ICT tools like Microsoft Word and others to expand your businesses. People should not limit ICT to coding, you can do very many things with ICT even for marketing and women should not be scared of going into the field.”
Other speakers including Sikelola Olaifa, Joel Gogwim, Pam Joshua, Ngozi Emefiele, Peter Iorapuu and others insisted on mentorship and support to assist the female gender to flourish in the tech ecosystem in the country.
The participants, drawn from the public, and private sector, operators of MSMEs, and young women in the ICT/e-commerce value chain were taken through sessions such as closing the gender literacy gap using digital skills and the power of public, private and people; mentoring and support gateways for women in the tech ecosystem in Nigeria; ICT gender-friendly platforms and application usage; digital skills and economic empowerment; application of ICT in everyday household and community life among others.
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