Web Muses in Africa
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Webmuses took part in AfricaHackTrip
a journey to explore
East African tech community.
we visited 4 countries:
Kenya
we visited 4 countries:
Kenya, Uganda,
we visited 4 countries:
Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda,
we visited 4 countries:
Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania.
with a group of
developers and designers
we meet a huge group of
women working in ICT
Let's meet
some of them!
Martha Chumo,
founder of Nairobi Dev School
She couldn't attend
Hacker School in New York City,
so she decided to found
a dev school in her hometown.
It's not the typical
school, it's called "school".
It's not the typical
student-teacher thing, it's a community,
a tech community in Nairobi, just
kind of doing the thing together.
So it's going really well,
better than I actually expected.
It's so much easier to
manage and organize stuff,
cause people are already
there, and they always get
to class earlier than the teacher.
It's in the process of getting better,
but for now it's almost
all the structure we have.
It's a 12 week program using Ruby on
Rails and reusing other people's tools.
My hope for the Dev School is that it's
going to be a start for Africa started
to come with its own solutions,
and it's not, you know, we,
people with no dev school, so sad - it's
more of just a starting point of growth
and students to be able to start thing,
actually realise they can start things
and then work well, and that's
how everything is started.
People just have to kind of put
their minds into it, put their time
and resources into it, and yeh
organize it and just do it.
There's no drama for that.
It's a vague idea but, yeah, that's
what I hope the Dev School kind of be.
Jessica Colaco,
Director of Partnership at iHub
She's passionate about
UX research and courts local
and international stakeholders
to adopt Kenyan-made solutions.
My 20% time is actually Mobile
and Robotics Tech Evangelist.
So when I'm not in iHub I'm actually
evangelising and pushing for engineers
to get better skill sets and encouraging
more women who study these areas to stay
in these areas, 'cuz
we need more of them.
Basically what the iHub acts
as, we act as this connector
for the technology community.
We actually, like, catalyze.
The idea is to provide a platform for
communities to catalyze with each other.
What do I mean by that is a
startup meet a potential investor.
And that has happened.
So it's this organic kind
of build of the community.
So you meet your team members,
you meet your potential investor,
but you also meet your potential client,
and your potential client might
just not be a local client,
it can be your international client.
According to me, like,
technology just works
if you really understand what
problem you're solving for the user.
So it's very powerful.
The moment you understand your
user and create a user experience
for them, you go a long way.
Julliet Zoe Wanyiri,
Gearbox & AkiraChix member
As an "internet of things" maniac,
she's a part of Kenya's
open makerspace for
design and rapid prototyping.
We want a space where people
working in electronics, arts,
design and fabrication can
come together and have access
to the tools they could
meet in the software,
but they need to take their product
from a concept through prototypes
to actually being a product.
I think that there's a sort
of environment around here,
where people encourage more
women to do things in technology.
They've set up Akira Chix, which
is a group of women in tech
and iHub community who go to
mentor other women, to tell them:
"So this is what we've been working on".
And it's not just mentorship,
they actually run a whole one
year long programme for around 18
and 19 year old girls who
just finished high school.
So they just have this
whole intense programme
where they learn all
what they need to know
and then they can build their
own solutions from there.
Miriam Wambui,
trainer of KampBits
She teaches web design
and development skills
to improve the lives
of less privileged children.
After you graduate at KampBits,
if you're successful to go
to the final level, you get a diploma.
With the diploma you can do web
design, you can do animation,
you can do CMS content
management website,
and we also do entrepreneurship
classes, so some of the students venture
to businesses, we have students who
launched their own business idea,
and recently one of ours students
won $25,000 for her business idea.
So I would say we lay a
platform for the students.
So I would say it has really
been an interesting journey,
considering I'm giving
back to the youths,
and I know how it is to be in class.
I know how it is to be ambitious,
and really hope for the best in life.
So I try, personally, to bridge that
gap, to mentor them, and to deliver,
to give them all when
it comes to training.
Jamie Mayombwe,
member of Girl Geek Kampala
She takes part
in building a community
that promotes and celebrates
women in the technology field.
It started as an event,
it was called Rails Girls,
it was in January earlier this year.
It was an initiative by the
ThoughtWorks Uganda company.
The first set of girls
were from our class,
because we didn't know anybody outside.
We have trained our class
so that's what we did.
Then we opened up a Google Hangout page,
a Facebook page and a Twitter account,
where we could be able to talk
to our other friends who wanted
to join the community, and
that's where it grew from.
And it's been going on till today.
This is where we usually meet, on
average about 15 to 10 girls come.
Right now we're training Ruby on Rails
and we want to start Drupal training.
Just show up, they give you a
laptop, they give you the software
that you need, they train
you for free - yeh!
Akaliza Keza,
organizer of Girls ICT Rwanda
She set up a company in Kigali
- the place to be
for developing ICT skills
and starting a business.
I came to Rwanda 'cuz an uncle had told
me that there's so many opportunities
for youth and for ICT and for women...
I was like, this is perfect!
I'm young, I'm in ICT and I'm a woman',
so I was like, OK, I should come here.
Maybe I should start a business and
actually train some people and work
with them instead of trying
to do all this work alone,
instead of starting to turn people down.
That's when I was like, I think
it's time to set up a company.
I'm part of a group called
Girls in ICT Rwanda,
we started a couple of years ago.
Sometimes we just go, like, just go
to a school and the students just come
and ask us questions about a career.
Some of them have never actually
seen a woman in an ICT field before,
so it changes their perspective.
They didn't have that many role
models, maybe when they were growing
up all the famous technopreneurs
were all men.
And for a lot of us it was just...
we could remember one incident in
our life that changed everything.
When I was younger I loved the fact
that I was the only girl
in my computer class.
As I got older I started learning why -
that was many of them just didn't think
it was a course that they could do,
like, oh no, girls are not good at
tech stuff, it's just a guys' thing.
And like, I didn't realise
that at the time,
I thought they just maybe
didn't enjoy it or something...
So it changed when I got older, I
started realising this is a problem.
Before I thought it was something
cool and nice, to be different,
but now it's something I hope to change.
Clarisse Iribagiza,
founder of HeHe Limited
As a CEO of a
mobile computing company,
she negates the idea that
technology is not for women.
When we started out, our
vision as He He Limited was
to just basically connect people
to information that they needed.
We thought up ideas, we
brainstormed on a couple
of solutions we felt were appropriate
for the market we are trying
to solve here in Rwanda in East Africa,
and one of the biggest
challenges we faced was the cost
of just being able to put this solution.
What we wanna do is be able
to sustain it over time,
train all these young people through
the hackathon programmes that we have,
the high school coding clubs,
training young people on how
to write code, so they can write code.
At the end of the day great business
solutions will come out of that
and sustain the whole programme.
For me that's what I'd love
to see - more collaboration.
If you wanna be challenged and
figure out how to solve problems
that you never even maybe thought
would be there, this is the place
that you'd definitely love to come.
Carolyne Ekyarisiima,
founder of Apps and Girls
After a Rails Girls event, she decided
to found her own project
that encourages women
to get interested in technology.
We started communicating and
doing a few meetings, yeh,
and then soon we organized
a full Joomla workshop.
They really love it, and most
of them they really want
something which can connect them.
So they have their colleagues every
time and they're designing some things,
they're participating in competitions.
They are really passionate about
it, even this TeknoMama women.
They really come at us after
the training, they stay behind
to ask more and to learn more.
It is really interesting.
Like in my country, I come from
Uganda, I not got any, any institution
or any programme, which is
helping women in technology.
And in all our competitions, the
hackathons, winners used to be men,
these programmers used to be men,
I never used to see any
woman doing something great.
So when I came here in Tanzania,
I got together another group,
where I can link myself to, as a girl.
Because sometimes, once you're a woman
or a girl and you're sharing together,
you don't have this feeling "he's more
smarter or he's competing with me" - no,
we are all the same and
we are doing one thing.
I've really decided to do something
for us, that can really help us.
Fatma Meawad,
Nokia
She came back from UK
to Egypt to tech computer science
at university and work
as a manager at Nokia.
When it comes to hard work and
commitment, women are the best.
You know what, you might find that let's
say the fifth is a man, for example,
and he could be better in some
brilliant things better than the first,
who got the top rank, but
this one studied better,
this one did more hard work.
This is a common thing that
we usually say about women.
We work harder.
We commit harder.
There's an exam, so I'm gonna study.
A man might say "Ah,
well, I'll get through it.
It's just important for me to pass".
A woman would be: "I wanna do the best".
Well I can tell you that
working as a software engineer,
going and exploring the technology
and the computing, starting a career
in computing or technology
- you're gonna have fun.
You're gonna have money,
many possibilities -
I'm going around the world - so, do it!