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Tech activists call for pan-African Women in IT group

Women’s tech groups and advocates from around the continent are coming together to form a Pan-African network of Women in Technology, in order to tackle the desperate shortage of role models that will encourage the next generation of young women to take up careers in IT. The network will also help different groups from across Africa share experiences and formulate best practices for running workshops and projects. Many of the existing organistions involved are based at tech hubs all over Africa or universities, and will be meeting up at a side event during the DEMOAfrica conference in Nairobi next month in order to discuss how the new umbrella body will work.

This is an issue we can’t mention too often: when it comes to high tech workplaces women, are massively underrepresented in all over the world, and especially so in Africa. And when you narrow that distinction down to African women of colour, you’re talking silly small statistics. So silly and small they’re hard to come by, in fact.

Network IT, a recruitment agency, recently published a report that suggested just 15% of IT workers in South Africa are female, and only a third of all respondents (male and female) are black. The number of black women wasn’t even reported – although I’d guess at around 20% of 15%. That’s an optimistic guess, by the way. Uchenna Moka, a strategist at Thoughtworks in Johannesburg, reckons that fewer than 1% of South African IT workers are black women.

This isn’t a South African problem. In the US, says Moka, it’s still just 3%.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that there’s lots of people doing something about this discrepancy. Moka, for example, is involved in Black Girls Code – the third South African event took place a couple of weeks ago and you can read about it on our sister site, which is dedicated to women in IT in South Africa.

Chisenga Muyoya is the founder of Asikana Girls’ Network in Zambia. Based at the BongoHive tech hub in Lusaka, Asikana has been up and running since January 2012 and runs regular workshops ranging from basic IT skills to social entrepreneurialism and business skills to help encourage Zambian women to start coding. One of the hardest things to overcome, she says, are the cultural barriers that see women avoid computer labs at school and not consider IT careers.

“Asikana is geared towards getting more girls into tech,” Muyoya explains, “And we also have meetups for women in IT to keep them there. Mostly it’s about telling women about tech and the benefits. There are two goals – to get more women into tech and to expose women to the possibilities tech brings to their lives

“We want to show women how cool computers are and that they can have careers in IT.”

Asikana is also about creating practical solutions too. Together with activists from women’s rights group Zamrize, Asikana mambers have created a mobile app that provides simple advice for Zambian women regarding what their rights are and where to get help if they need it.

Muyoya presented the case for a Pan-African network of similar groups during a recent Web Gathering conference on the subject.

“We believe that this would be a great way to display a wealth of talent from across Africa,” Muyoya says, “Women in African countries are doing amazing things, and we never hear about it.”

She’s already begun talking to AkiraChix in Kenya and Women in Tech Uganda (WITU) about best practices. Using a Ushahidi crowdmap, they’ve begun plotting where other groups exist who they’d like to get involved.

Judith Owigar, president of AkiraChix, says that there’s only so much each group can do by itself, and that once a new women’s group is established it’s a struggle to meet demand for its services.

“We need to see more collaboration, more idea exchange, more celebrating African stories, more female technologists and more hackathons [for girls],” Owigar says, “ The challenge is culture, affordability, education and digital literacy as well as a lack of online content in African languages. We have very few visible mentors and role models, and our constant challenge is to find women who can be menrtors adn can mentor other women. The number of requests we get is overwhelming, so one big network where we could feed off of and help each other would be good.”

After spending a long time involved with conferences and competitions to encourage IT entrepreneurs across the continent, Marieme Jamme from Africa Gathering is convinced that the Africa ‘tech revolution’ has reached saturation point from the point of view of NGO interest, and that there are too many different groups all trying to do the same thing independently and in a patronising manner.

“The woman in Africa is seen as a subject of development,” Jamme says, “Not someone who can innovate and achieve on their own.”
More umbrella organisations across all aspects of “Tech in Africa”, which can avoid repetition of effort and keep others focussed on grassroots development, would be a good thing.

“We can create as many networks as you want, but the common delineator is that we don’t share our resources and mentorships,” Jamme says, “We need to pool resources, encourage innovation and support them as business people and help them to be part of this amazing ecosystem we’re trying to build across the continent.“

We’ll check back and find out more about the new group’s progress after DEMOAfrica in October.

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