In Africa, there is an obvious gender disparity in the technology industry, with men dominating the field and women often struggling to break through.
In Africa, there is an obvious gender disparity in the technology industry, with men dominating the field and women often struggling to break through.
Despite the potential for technology to empower communities, many women in Africa lack access to the software, hardware, and education necessary to pursue tech careers.
This challenge is even more pronounced for women from underrepresented groups or rural areas, who face additional obstacles in accessing tech opportunities.
However, Data Girl Technologies is working to change this narrative – through its innovative approach of providing coding, mentorship, and networking opportunities to young women in Africa.
Based in Cameroon, they are helping to foster the next generation of female tech talent and create a fair playing field for women in the industry.
In a chat with Frida Eposi, the Co-founder and COO of Data Girl Technologies, we explored the mission, values, and impact of the company, and how they are working towards creating a fair playing field for women and girls in technology across the continent.
At Data Girls technologies. we are fostering the next generation of female tech talent in Africa, and we do this by training the women and girls on how to code and design and we link them up with amazing opportunities in the tech ecosystem.
What made my team and I start this organisation is that we realize that there is a huge gender gap. There’s a huge gender disparity in the tech ecosystem, not only in Cameroon but across Africa.
We also realized that it’s a global problem, we have a very tiny representation of women, and we wanted to do something that will impact women globally and that’s one of the reasons why we decided to empower women in the tech ecosystem.
Secondly, Data Girl Technologies identified that tech is a global language that has been spoken and understood by everyone. The future is tech, everything is moving towards technology, and it will be a beautiful thing if women can accompany this movement by taking advantage of it.
There is even a report from the World Economic Forum that says that in 2030, 85% of jobs and opportunities will be developed from tech and we want to see women being part of these opportunities, which is why we decided to continue empowering women.
Also, our education system is not the best, the structure isn’t either as it doesn’t encourage all women to take advantage of these tech opportunities, which is why we designed something more practical. We also realized that global Boot Camps are equally not very cheap.
Data Girl Technologies decided to design something that is geared or focused on empowering women, but equally more accessible, less costly, and easy to understand.
We have three target groups. First, we’re targeting undergraduates and graduates who are already in the tech space studying computer science-related courses.
And then we’re also targeting women that are transitioning from other fields into the tech fields, from other career paths into the tech career and women who are in business but need to factor in or need to implement tech in their businesses.
In addition, we are targeting school dropouts because we realize that tertiary education in Cameroon as under 10% of representations of students who leave secondary school, do not make it to the university for many reasons.
We are targeting females between the ages of 18 to 40, but there is also a process. We have a link for an online assessment, from there, we separate those who are already in tech-related courses or doing something in relation to tech from those who have no idea, and from them, we are able to target and teach them differently, or have a different approach to teaching them.
For those with no idea, we know we have to start from the very beginning, taking them, one step at a time.
Besides being on different platforms, and speaking on encouraging more women and girls on the importance of being part of the tech ecosystem and community, regardless of their career path.
We equally hosted our own Twitter space where we had an open conversation with both women and men who are in the tech ecosystem.
We used that as an opportunity to tell more people about the importance of being part of the tech ecosystem, not just as a woman, but as a person because in the future, the majority of job opportunities will come from tech.
We used the space as an opportunity to empower and inform more women and men. We are trying to understand the challenges that some women face, being in the tech ecosystem, and proffer solutions based on what we have personally gone through in our own different kinds of challenges.
It was equally an opportunity to hear from other stakeholders in the ecosystem and other women in tech from other countries, the challenges that they are faced with, which also served as an informative platform for those who had no idea how to tackle some challenges.
Having a platform that brings together different thoughts on challenges and solutions is our own way of taking advantage of Women’s Month, sharing, informing and equally impacting women and girls in diverse sectors, encouraging them to be part of the tech ecosystem, regardless of what you do.
At Data Girls Technologies, we understand that everyone is different, but what makes us stand out is that we are gender-focused. Our attention is on the global problem, which is reducing the gender disparity in the tech space.
We have a young and dynamic staff, who are able to understand the challenges and meet up with the trends, to be able to give out the best of the best.
Our courses are on-site and we realize that besides the challenge of expensive internet in Cameroon, there’s that laxity that comes with online learning, thus what makes us stand out is that we can follow up with our students intentionally, help them identify their challenges, and support them in meeting up with where they are lagging in the courses.
Our courses are affordable because we have a customized plan that fits everyone who is interested in the course, meaning that anyone who is interested in the course can be part of it, regardless of how much they’re making, or how much they earn at the end of the year.
What also makes us stand out is the way our courses are structured in addition to having a learning-by-doing approach. We work on a project basis and this has helped us train students in coding, and UI/UX irrespective of their mental capacity.
At the end of our 12-week BootCamp, we realize that our students do not only come up with projects of their own, but they have products that they can present even to investors or to the interviewer on what they have done. At the end, our students would have gained knowledge, experience and getting job-ready.
Data Girl Technologies has a community of over 3000 women and girls that we empower and impact and we have a one-week session mentoring session on our programs.
We do not just train and let you go, we help you to become ready for the job market, supporting you by designing a career path based on your passion because learning a skill in the tech space is one thing while using the skill to target a career path is another.
We have one week to help you design a career path and how you can approach it, starting from LinkedIn, and meeting mentors one on one to discuss your ambitions and future projects.
Data Girl Technologies’ idea isn’t just to train, but to equally help you through job linking. We look for partners who are ready to employ tech talent, however, we don’t decide for the partners on how and whom to select, but we are confident that they select the very best from our programs.
So far, we’ve been able to link up and have employment for over 30% of our student population, and our goal is to make sure we have more partners who are open and willing to employ our pool of tech talents.
Some of our students who are now making money skills they acquired during our boot camps include
For the facilitators, we have a team of experts and a curriculum that has been set up. We have an assessment, for all interested facilitators within Cameroon’s tech ecosystem.
After our selection, they go through our curriculum and see what they can adopt, or subtract, and implement into their own training styles.
Then we come up with the best, and so far, we’ve been working with two amazing facilitators, and fortunately, one of our co-founders, Selma Ndi is equally a full stack web developer, which makes it easier for us to not only assess but equally work in line with what we are doing.
For challenges, having students make payments is very tough. is very challenging. For instance, our full-stack web development program, which is a three-month course we charge a little over $1,000.
It has not been very easy for students to pay at once, which is why we have a very flexible payment plan. But equally, we understand that even with the flexible payment plans, some students find it difficult, and we want to appreciate those partners who have helped us in the past to support some of these students.
There is also the challenge of having the right material resources like laptops, or even cell phones just to keep up with the community
The challenge also includes the cost of daily running different boot camps as we spend approximately $8k-$10k, this is partly owing to students not being able to pay for this boot camp.
We now have to run pre-finance programs, where students will have to come in and learn, get linked with our partners and when they start working, then they are able to pay us.
There are other challenges that we face on a daily basis, given that we are an edtech startup in a community that is recovering from the war in Cameroon, the socio-political unrest that has been in the country for over five years now. It has also been very challenging just running programs in that atmosphere.
Our tech ecosystem is a developing one, given that we have very little representation in Africa. It’s promising, but a lot of work has to be done. And empowering, not just women, but empowering young people generally, is the work that is ongoing in our current Cameroon tech ecosystem.
And it’s impressive, because, when an ecosystem is developing, and it’s still growing, then there is prospect and possibilities for bigger things to happen, which is where we are at at the moment. And I see that the future is very promising for us because every young person in the tech ecosystem is not only smart,
We take the world’s tech ecosystem as a yardstick to see the African tech ecosystem. So we set up high targets to meet up. So what I can say is that ecosystem is growing, It’s promising, but we are not there yet.
The Growth4Her has been a big push for our business structure and strategy. Besides there are practical workshops and seminars and networking programs that we’ve had in the program
The highlight for me is working with different mentors from different sectors, who are able to zoom into our business structures and model, helping us design a more accurate structure that we leverage in reaching out to our target audience.
The mentors weren’t just exceptional but intentional with their idea of shaping us for investment and scalability.
They have pushed us to be more intentional about what we do, and not just run a startup, but to empower women and girls in the global tech ecosystem.
For the next 5 to 10 years, Data Girl Technologies is envisaging not only empowering more than 3000 to even 10,000 women, but now we want to place them into different jobs and help them start their own businesses.
We won’t just be training women, we will be placing women in jobs, and placing them in those areas where women need to be present to change the narrative because we believe that changing the status quo will help reduce gender disparity, women need to be in these roles.
We need more women leaders and role models, so our goal is to boost the number of women leaders in the tech ecosystem, and also help women and girls present in teams that are only male-dominated.
We want the women and girls that we train to use the skill they acquire to build their own self and empower other women as well.
What I’d like to add is simply an encouragement, the world’s going tech, and we are encouraging more women and girls to get into the tech space, if you’re a young entrepreneur, a woman entrepreneur, who has not yet implemented tech in her business, there is an opportunity to do so.
If you are a young woman who’s not sure or has been discouraged by discrimination and gender disparity in the tech ecosystem. I am encouraging you to hang in there because your efforts are what we need for the future.
We need your effort, commitment and your intentionality to be able to create a tech ecosystem that is more gender diverse and responsive in the future.
Featured Image: Frida Eposi, Co-founder & COO, Data Girl Technologies
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