Girls Against the World! A Tech story from Uganda.

#WomenInTech

In November 2013, I was redeployed from the News and Current affairs team at Urban TV to the Business and Technology Desk.  I quickly realised that the story of women in technology was a hot topic and 6 months later it still is a trending subject. 

At a Girl Geek dinner held at the Piato restaurant in February this year, I learnt of the sorority clubs like GirlGeekKampala and Afchix which were closing the gender gap in Tech by teaching girls how to code. Here, it was agreed that every IT woman should belong to an IT group believing that great things will happen when girls and women come together under one room. One of the girls that attended this Thought Works powered dinner is Bonita Nanziri whose story is a bright shining light in the women in Tech movement.

Designing for Women Hackathon

12 hours after the GirlGeek dinner, I am sitting in a room full of girls and women in a brainstorming session at the Designing for Women Hackathon hosted by the WITU Hub and facilitated by Barbara Natali. In this room, I listened as woman after woman narrated ordeals of being sexually discriminated against in the Tech world. The women here concluded that one of the biggest challenges facing women in Tech is the patriarchal nature of Ugandan society. I remember thinking how it would be interesting to see what solutions these Tech women would code to solve this problem. A database and site where women could report violence which would then be visualised and used for advocacy was the most viable application that came out of the workshop held over two week-ends.

Bonita Nanziri

Irritated by the usual, "let’s have one girl on team for gender balance", Bonita Nanziri, a student at the College of Computing and Information Sciences at Makerere University, put together a team of girl developers who would be designing an application for the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2014.  While the organisers of the conference and media types like myself were highlighting the significance of having an all-girl tech team, the AfriGal Tech team was focusing on winning the grand prize. They pitched their sickle cell diagnosis app so well that one person remarked on twitter that "these girls mean business, they are playing hard-ball." And win they did, taking the Innovation Challenge category and also emerging overall winner of the Microsoft Imagine Cup National finals. These girls together with Team Project 1 that designed a Tuberculosis diagnosis app will represent Uganda in the online global semifinals of the lucrative competition.

Team AfriGal Tech posing with Mictosoft's Roy Paul Owino after
winning the Imagine Cup Nationals. Photo by Robert Tuhaise.

WITU Hub

The WITU hub was by far been the biggest development in the Women in Tech narrative here in Uganda with Barbara Birungi, a leading female technologist and co-founder of the Hive Colab championing efforts to teach every girl in Uganda how to code.

“We believe that the gender gap in the Tech space can be greatly reduced by equipping as many girls as possible with coding skills in an environment where they do not have to compete with the boys” Victoria Mbabazi, coordinator of the CodeGirls session at WITU Hub

The Basic Computing class and the Code Girls session are the early initiatives of the women only hub and at this year’s GirlsInICT celebrations which will be held at the WITU Hub, we look forward to the unveiling of the application developed by the girls who attended the 7 week Code Girls course.

Trailblazers

Mariemme Jamme is also called Mama Africa for her role in telling the technology story on the African continent. Mariemme was here in Uganda for a week guiding Ugandan developers as they hacked and built a fisheries app and the Africa Progress Panel app. The latter was developed by the SyncHub team led by female CEO, Brenda Katwesigye.

Mariemme Jamme posing with the SyncHub that
developed the Africa Progress Panel app.

Mariemme’s story has one lesson; if a Senegalese girl who did not go to school till the age of 16 can run her own Tech firm in the UK, Spot One Global Solutions and be named among the top 10 African Voices in Tech by CNN among many other enviable accomplishments, surely there is hope for every Ugandan girl.

"When I look down at this golden statue, may it remind me and every little child that no matter where you're from, your dreams are valid." Lupita Nyong'o, Oscar winning actress

In Uganda, we are not short of stories that can inspire women in Tech. From Dr. Dorothy Okello, founder of Women of Uganda Network,(WOUGNET) and winner of the first ever African Digital Woman of the year award, to Terry Karungi, award winning co-founder of Kola studios, the developers of the Matatu game app. Others to note are Eunice Namirembe, winner of Google’s Africa Connected competition, Christine Ampaire, co-founder of GirlGeek Kampala and winner of the MTN Women Business award. These are the ones that have won accolades. There are probably hundreds more that are coding and creating tech whose stories are yet to be told.

Tomorrow

With global leaders like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, it is only a matter of time before the most powerful person in Tech is a woman. But all stakeholders in this debate know that the real battle is at the grassroots; in the hubs, IT classes, primary schools and at the family table when career choices are being discussed. And that’s why Tech reporters like Brenda Kembabazi of Urban TV and myself will be following the progress of the Code Girls sessions and girls sorority classes, the growth of the AfriGal Tech team, and looking out for the little girls who dream of changing the world.

Urban TV's Brenda Kembabazi ( with back to the camera) interviews Victoria Mbabazi,
one of the developers of the Nakazadde app.

Photos tagged INNOVATE are sourced from Urban TV's coverage of the Tech scene in Uganda.