Women Techsters Selects Over 1,000 Women Across Africa For Concentrated Tech Training
The Women Techsters Fellowship (WTF) Technology For Social Change and Development Initiative, class of 2023, taking place in Lagos, Nigeria has selected Sixty-Eight (68) women from Kenya, to be admitted into the program.
The Women Techsters which launched in 2021 is directed at filling the gap between digital and technology comprehension which has been divided between both genders, thereby securing equal opportunities for all. The training is a year-long intensive training.
Seven Hundred and Three (703) applications were received from Kenya, but only 68 applicants could meet the tedious requirements needed to be a partaker of the program.
While a total of One Thousand, One Hundred and Sixty-Seven (1,167) Nigerian women were selected out of the Ten Thousand, Nine Hundred and Twelve Nigerian women (10,912) that applied.
The class of 2022/2023 have received a total of One Thousand, Four Hundred and Sixty-Six(1,466) beneficiaries. They were selected from a total of Fourteen Thousand, Five Hundred and Nine (14,509) applicants who applied. The set is about ten per cent of the applicants.
The fellowship is being offered for free. It is programmed to be an experimental process of teaching in technology, which should result in an upskill for young girls and women within the 16 to 40 age bracket across 15 countries on the continent.
Other countries which were represented by their girls and women include Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda South Africa, Egypt, Mozambique,
The training is packed with courses in Mobile Development, Software Development, Product Design, Product Management, Cybersecurity, Data Science/ Artificial Intelligence Engineering, Blockchain, and Mixed Reality/3D.
While making the announcement through a press conference, Blessing Ashi, The Women Techsters Initiative lead, mentioned that process of selection was quite rigorous because only the best and most dedicated applicants were selected.
Also Read: MDUNDO SURPASSES PROJECTED STREAMING TARGET FOR YEAR 2022
According to her, “We started the registration process in March 2022 and we had three stages of assessments for the beneficiaries and I can categorically say that we have selected the best based on the performance of beneficiaries across all three stages.
She stated“I want to say congratulations to everyone who made it this far and I hope that the skills to be acquired during this learning phase will stand you out amongst your peers. Stay true to the program and I wish you the best.”
Oladiwura Oladepo, Executive Director and Co-founder of Tech4Dev, encouraged the participants to be dedicated to the fellowship. “Congratulations for making it into the fellowship but I must tell you that this is the time to put in work because without putting in the effort, success may not be guaranteed. It takes long hours, sometimes sleepless nights but I can assure you that success is just around the corner if you stay dedicated.”
She reiterated, “Our goal is to train 5 million women across Africa by 2030 and we believe that when the call for application comes for the next fellowship calendar, we’ll have not just more applicants from Kenya but more beneficiaries.