In order to close the gender digital divide, the ITU, its partners, and other organizations collaborated this year (and every year) to inspire and motivate girls to pursue careers in ICTs. The aim was and still is to inspire young women and girls to seek education and jobs in science, engineering, technology, mathematics, and other subjects and to support them in realizing their aspirations.

This year, the theme of Girls in ICT Day was ‘Digital Skills for Life’. The Internet Society – Uganda Chapter celebrated the Girls in ICT Day on 27 April by organizing a Twitter space in partnership with the Research and Education Network for Uganda (RENU), the national research and education network in Uganda in charge of promoting education and research collaboration.

This celebration had discussions on challenges that hinder adolescent girls and young women from taking up careers in tech and the opportunities for skilling girls in ICT.

The event was moderated by Ms Sarah Kiden and graced by two speakers who are female RENU engineers, that is, Patience Nagaba, a senior Network Engineer at RENU and an engineering volunteer at Uganda’s Internet Exchange Point (UIXP) and Brenda Namuli, a Systems and Software engineer at RENU.

Two hundred fifteen people attended the celebrations that evening with numerous deliberations made.

Deliberations

First Session: Challenges of ICT Skilling

In the first segment that focused on ICT skilling challenges, Brendah identified different skills and competencies that girls can harness and basic computer skills and literacy to advanced skills like complex systems programming, cyber security and systems maintenance and optimization were mentioned.

At the early stages, Brendah elaborated further on the different basic computer skills and how they are vital in laying the ground for young girls at an early stage which included starting a computer and basic Microsoft Office skills like word processing and Excel file manipulation.

Brendah further identified challenges contributing to the current wide digital divide, including stereotypes and bias in the ICT industry and limited skills and exposure that would enable girls to take up numerous roles in the tech domain.

Patience identified more challenges, including limited access to computers, related ICT devices and facilities, and social and cultural barriers.

Second Session: Solutions and Opportunities

In the second segment that focused on solutions and opportunities, Patience iterated the essence of exposing ICT devices to girls at a younger age, contrary to cases of first encounters with such technologies at only higher learning institutions. She further mentioned leveraging of different female mentors who have excelled in this field to help mentor and inspire the young generation.

To Brendah, career awareness should be created for girls (at a very younger age to get better results) such that girls are equipped with the necessary information regarding the available career opportunities to make decisions along their career path.

Brenda also suggested creating safe learning environments in our society for example efforts done in availing platforms like Pyladies Kampala (@pyladieskla), a space helping more women become active participants and leaders in the Python open-source community.

Patience concluded this segment by emphasizing different actors like ICT regulatory organizations and online community leaders to create safe environments for ladies while online and mentioned that it’s every person’s responsibility to protect young girls online.

Third Session: Open Discussion with Attendees

From the audience, Mr Livingstone encouraged the rest of the already-established women in ICT to explain to the public what inspired them to join the ICT industry. This, he said, would inspire the rest of the girls to join.

Eliezah Titus emphasized the need to reduce costs for uptaking different stem learning programs to encourage large intake, especially of young girls.

Ms Karen requested the speakers to share different opportunities for young girls in Uganda’s ICT domain and Brendah shared different opportunities which included Women in Technology, RENU’s Industrial and graduate training program. Patience shared opportunities of Fundi Girls by Fundi Bots and the school ICT clubs by the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) and Jungle Girls program.

As parting shots, Patience encouraged girls to challenge themselves to be as good for the job as possible. Brendah also encouraged girls to endeavour to apply and take up different opportunities available.

The full space recording can be accessed via https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1ypKddOVBRdKW