By John Ikani
GetBundi Education Foundation, the philanthropic arm of GetBundi Education Technology Limited, is set to launch an exciting initiative aimed at providing free online coding training for 500 African women from June 1 to August 31, 2023.
Dubbed ‘TechSis 2023’, the program seeks to bridge the gender gap in digital skills on the continent, especially among women, who are highly underrepresented in the tech industry.
According to research, only 30% of African women make up the tech industry, which is highly disproportionate to the percentage of women on the continent.
“Bias and stereotypes have made it difficult for women to be properly represented in the technology industry, leading to a high risk of women missing out on the jobs of the future,” said Mrs Juliet Ijei, course coordinator, GetBundi Education Foundation in a statement made available to newsmen.
According to her, despite the overwhelming percentage of women in the African continent, available data reveals that only very few are in the digital and technology space compared to men, with women in the tech space making up only about 22 percent of the industry workforce in Nigeria.
“This implies that women in sub-Saharan Africa have a high risk of missing out on the jobs of the future, with an estimated 230 million jobs in the region requiring digital skills by 2030,” she added.
To address this issue, GetBundi has taken the initiative to provide free training to women in Coding, a highly demanded skill.
The free Coding courses, which will run from June 1 to August 31, 2023, will focus on teaching programming languages such as JavaScript, Python, Scratch, and Ethical Hacking.
Women who are 18 years and above and interested in taking the course can register for free between April 24 and May 23, 2023, or until the first 500 women have registered.
Providing more insights into what the training promises to offer, the Founder of GetBundi Education Technology, Osita Oparaugo, disclosed that Prof Florence C. Emenalo, Director, Center for Women and Gender Studies, Imo State University, Nigeria, would give the opening speech to kick-start the Coding skills training.
“We oppose education inequality, especially with STEM and Digital Skills, and we won’t stop until millions of African women benefit from GetBundi Education Foundation. This time it is Coding, by the last quarter of this year, it will be Digital Marketing targeting 1,000 women,” Oparaugo said.
“The women are here, the hunger to learn is there, just the opportunity and that is what GetBundi Education Foundation is presenting to women across Africa,” he added.
It is worthwhile to note that GetBundi is a government-approved educational technology platform committed to leveraging technology to make STEM and Digital Skills learning across Africa accessible to all.
The educational technology platform recently partnered with the Lagos State Government to commission a STEM laboratory at Wesley Girls Senior Secondary School, Yaba, Lagos, a pilot phase of an ongoing partnership between the Lagos State Government and GetBundi Education Technology.
