Across the world, women remain underrepresented in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This is especially true in many African countries including Nigeria.
In June 2014, three young Nigerian women came together with a vision: a world where the number of women in the STEM industries has risen and women feel welcomed and appreciated for their efforts and achievements. They realized that one way to do this was by encouraging more young girls to take up STEM subjects at secondary school and university and stick with it even after education. Hence, Afro-Tech Girls was born.
Afro-Tech Girls is a private non-profit organization that supports young girls and women in STEM subjects. They run programmes such as robotics, UI/UX, data analytics, coding and offer mentorship opportunities to girls in tech. They also run a bootcamp and have internship programmes to prepare the girls for work in the companies of their choice.
In finding out more about Afro-Tech Girls and their strive for more inclusion, we invited Ms. Adeola Shasanya, Co-Founder of AfroTech Girls on the Fidelity SME Forum.
She told us that Afro-Tech Girls was founded in 2015 to increase participation of girls and young women in science, Technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to provide opportunities for secondary school and early career girls to grow with STEM education via internship and mentorship programs. Their overall goal is providing an environment for girls where they can keep learning and growing.
They plan to launch the 2021 Internship Programme to give female potentials that are tech-savvy first-hand experience in the real-life career/ corporate world. These female youngsters would be exposed to more experience and knowledge insights from industry leaders and experts. They also have free workshops for these girls with internet facility as well as laptops that enables their knowledge with UI/UX.
The goal of AfroTech Girls is to bridge the gap between gender in the STEM sector with Secondary school girls and young graduates being the focus.
Let’s support them and push for more women in tech.
