Mecer Inter-Ed (MIE) and Microsoft are giving 10 South African ladies the opportunity to break into tech or advance their IT careers with an internationally accredited Microsoft certification. The initiative dubbed #SheCanDoIT aims to evolve the ICT sector through the growth and enablement of women. It targets South African ladies between the ages of 21 and 30 who are passionate, curious, and have the desire to learn about technology.
Each selected lady will receive a laptop, Microsoft course, and exam vouchers. They will get mentorship sessions with female leaders in the ICT field, as well as step-by-step assistance from Mecer Inter-Ed’s qualified talent acquisition department. This Mercer says is “to ensure these South African ladies are ready and equipped for their new careers in IT“.
MIE and Microsoft are committed to investing in programs that support equality. This is why we are launching the #SheCanDoIT campaign, which aims to bring a fresh approach and offer unique opportunities to women in the tech field.
Mecer Inter-Ed, Microsoft #SheCanDoIt initiative requirements and steps
You must be a South African lady between the ages of 21 and 30.
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Wentors is partnering with Microsoft to provide mentorship and training to one thousand women in tech. Through the initiative Microsoft 4Afrika will provide a platform to encourage women working in the technology industry in Africa.
Wentors is a global community of women in technology mentoring and nurturing each other through a platform in which experienced women in the tech industry can mentor upcoming young women joining the industry, and final year students looking to start a technology career.
The initiative was launched by Microsoft 4Afrika employee, EduAbasi Chukwunweike, a graduate in software engineering with her Masters’ degree in Informatics. Chukwunweike noticed that as a solutions specialist in the enterprise team responsible for the cloud business in Nigeria, most of her conversations within the customer environment were with men. This got her thinking about how she could make an impact with gender diversity in the technology industry, and ultimately led to the launch of Wentors.
“We believe the people best situated to nurture these dreams are the women currently in technology and hence we are redefining the mentorship roadmap by building a global community of women in technology who nurture each other,” says Chukwunweike.
The organisation runs Cohorts programmes, eight to 12-week periods during which each mentor commits to an hour-long weekly session with her mentee. The cohorts have weekly themes and provide the mentors with mentorship packages to guide them through the process. As part of the cohort, the programme provides soft skills training and webinars in areas such as personal branding, networking, communication and Imposter syndrome. The goal of this training is to provide women entering the tech industry with the skills necessary to thrive and sustain a career within the tech ecosystem. The Wentors community grants its participants access to expertise crucial for career progression.
“An opportunity to interact with great women in the tech space and having them give me an insight of the job market and ways to improve myself before getting into the job market is such a bonus for me, considering I am a student,” comments Anne Wariara, a participant from Kenya. “Being exposed to workshops that enable me grow my soft skill is also the best considering most institutions dwell on equipping us with technical skills and overlooking on the soft skills which often play a huge role in our career,” she adds.
The programmes are all facilitated virtually, which enables a global audience to participate, and uses a platform that leverages AI algorithms to match mentors with mentees, and a mentoring framework with a set number of sessions, continuous feedback between mentors and mentees, and a progress measurement. The organisation uses Microsoft’s Office 365 and hosts all its training and webinars using Teams.
To date, Wentors has facilitated mentorship among 240 women across four continents, with a community of over 900 members. Now, the programme has set itself an ambitious target of facilitating 1,000 mentorships across the world. To achieve this lofty goal, the organisation is partnering with different communities and tech companies.
“Meeting this goal is vitally important, as this brings us closer to increasing the numbers of women represented in the tech industry,” comments Chukwunweike.
“Our ultimate goal is to have women in technology make up 50% across all positions in the IT industry, which amounts to impacting the lives of 8 million women globally“.
“It’s evident by the significant investments into skills development and educational programmes that Microsoft believes in upskilling our youth to have the right skills to succeed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is a social, moral and economic necessity to ensure young girls and women in Africa are given the skills to master technology and increase the number of future-ready professionals,” she adds.
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Microsoft hosts 32 women in technology in a hackathon event in Nairobi.
9th July 2019, Nairobi: Kenya
Furthering its commitment to diversity and inclusivity in the engineering and technology space, Microsoft hosted the LEAP Hackathon. The event, which strives to increase technology skills, facilitate learning through challenges as well as strengthen the place of women in the technology sector, focused on solutions in the agricultural and health sectors.
“Research shows that the average productivity of major crops in Kenya has only increased by 17% over the last 10 years.
The lack of digitally enabled agripreneurs, inputs and quality data are sited as the reasons for this slow growth.
Microsoft endeavors to close the gap that exists in this sector by training ‘women hackers’ from non-traditional ICT backgrounds in the LEAP Hackathon programme who competed for the top spot in the hackathon”
Amrote Abdella, Regional Director for Microsoft 4Afrika.
The LEAP Engineering Acceleration Program is a 16-week program – launched to increase diversity within Microsoft. The program provides real world experience through development and project management apprenticeships and combines traditional classroom learning with hands-on projects.
32 Female hackers were identified to participate in the hackathon using a strict recruitment process which helped gauge the abilities of the applicants through 2 rounds of evaluation of the applications.
Participants of the hackathon received Azure credits while the overall winning group was awarded prizes.
The hackathon was a success, many novel solutions
were brought forth by the participants, but the group called The BugSlayers took
centre stage with their innovative AgRight presentation. AgRight is a
web application that uses Microsoft AI (Azure Custom Vision) for pest and
disease prediction. The app can also predict harvest time, connects farmers to
buyers and monitors farm activities. The bright minds behind this invention are
Clara Nashipai, Sylvia Achach, Rosianah Musyoka and Bethany Jepchumba.
Post hackathon, Microsoft will work with the
winning group on an ongoing internship program where they will be mentored and
helped to further build and develop their solution and skills.
“We are thrilled at the outcome of this year’s LEAP hackathon! As we continue to work to upskill and educate women across the continent – the endless opportunities and unprecedented innovations this brings is something we are excited to be a part of” Amrote Abdella.
