Africa Agility Foundation in collaboration with the Lagos State Government, Impact Lagos and Eko Innovation Centre has concluded the second edition of ‘Lagos Girls in Tech,’ its Bootcamp for 100 undergraduate and unemployed females in Lagos, recently.
The Bootcamp aimed at intentionally closing the gender gap in tech by empowering the young female with a strong foundation towards building a career in tech, agile or becoming a techpreneurs.
This edition was designed to provide Lagos females with education, mentorship, career and entrepreneurship opportunities in tech, agile, and human skills.
Participants were awarded certification from Scrum Alliance, an agile organisation after completing the 2-day intense training facilitated by Mrs. Aanu Gopald and Jesse Fewell and in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, UI/UX, Web Development, and Data Science.
The last week of the camp was an innovative hackathon challenge using Scrum Framework, an iterative and incremental product development method to design digital solutions that help to solve Lagos State complex problems (Traffic, Waste Management, and E-Healthcare which aligns with the first three themes of the SDG development agenda.
The Bootcamp was concluded with a “show and tell” and pitch deck of the innovations to the state Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, alongside his cabinet members and MDs of corporations.
In his speech at the grand finale, Sanwo-Olu commended the participants over their dedication, commitment and innovative solutions to solve pressing problems of Lagosian.
The Governor promised all the participants laptops, adding that the state would also adopt some of the innovations created by the girls in solving some of Lagos State pressing issues.
Mr. Aniedi Udo-Obong, Program Manager West Africa, Google Inc., spoke with the girls on how to pitch their ideas and sell the value propositions before the “show and tell”.
Commenting on the initiative, Aanu Gopald, Founder, Africa Agility, said: “All around the world, digital transformation is becoming a critical factor in long-term, sustainable social and economic growth, and Africa is no exception.
“As Africa is poised to be one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, the key action that will drive growth over the next two decades is the adoption of Agile and digital technologies, hence equipping the youth particularly the underrepresented gender with digital competencies must be a staple in every country’s social economic development Agenda.
“This will also reduce the gender inequality in the technology industry today, as the percentage of women in tech currently stands at about 25 per cent, while black/African American women occupy three per cent of the population.”
