Africa-Press – Kenya. Pan-African impact organisation, Power Learn Project (PLP) has partnered with Savabyte to empower women with tech skills.
This is through a programme launched in Nairobi last week, targeting women between aged betweeen 18 and 25 years.
It seeks to mentor, train, sponsor and offer employment opportunities to applicants.
The applicants will be subjected to a four month training where they will have peer-to-peer interactions and also mentorship sessions for specific tutoring.
This will be through a user friendly Learning Management System with free data access.
It targets women across the country, the East African region and the African continent as a whole.
The transfer of skills, skills development and technological capacity has been flagged as critical to developing solutions for unemployment and underemployment.
The chief growth and operations officer for PLP, Mumbi Ndung’u said the goal of the programme is to drive transformative change for the youth of Africa, through technology skilling.
“Kenya and Africa in general faces a huge digital skills gap, which is diluting economic opportunities and development. About 230 million jobs across the continent will require some level of digital skills by 2030 calling for more skilled individuals,” Ndung’u said.
PLP notes there are only 700,000 quality software developers in Africa of which about 18 per cent are women.
With its intention to train one million developers by 2027, the organisation reiterates on advancing more women in taking up the spaces in the sector to bridge the gap.
According to a study by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the skills gap occasioned by gender in the continent translates to a potential for staggering 650 million training opportunities.
This is an estimated $130 billion (Sh15.7 trillion) market value.
Speaking during the launch, Microsoft Africa Development Centre managing director, Catherine Muraga, said with 70 per cent of Africa’s population between the ages of 18 and 35, 60 per cent of this group are either under-employed or unemployed.
“The time to invest in digital advancement is now, and we not only need to dwell on mentorship but also focus on sponsoring these mentees to ensure full transition into the job market,” Muraga said.
Savabyte’s CEO Irene Mwangi said the programme is open to anyone who is willing to join the tech world, but urges more women to take up the challenge and benefit from the initiative supported by various partners.
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