Dakar — In Senegal's booming, bustling capital, the country's first technology network for women aims to alter the landscape for technology developers.
The 'Jjiguene Tech Hub – 'Jjiguene' is the word for 'woman' in Senegal's Wolof language - has had a substantial impact on the young women who have enrolled in its activities and have "seen their lives changed, in terms of their ability to express themselves, their self-confidence and their accomplishments", said Binta Coudy Dé, a technology engineer who co-founded the tech hub in 2012.
Dé, along with Mariéme Jamme, head of London-based technology consultancy SpotOne Global Solutions, and computer scientist Ndeye Awa, decided to set up the hub, using the slogan 'Share-build-inspire'.
Dé said that while women are well represented in many areas of work in Senegal, that's not the case in the technology sector.
As Dé indicates, Senegal is an increasingly good country to be working while female. In 2010, the country's gender parity law took effect, a rarity in Africa and elsewhere. A record 65 women became Parliamentarians, of a total of 150. A number of businesses and civil society organizations have established various training programs to expand the skills of girls and women.
But in Africa's technology sector, only 15 percent of workers are women, even though technology is a key driver of economic growth in continent wide. Dé and her colleagues are determined to increase the number of Senegalese women working as coders and developers, as well as technology executives, by offering training, networking, mentoring, and knowledge sharing.
City officials say Dakar needs the creativity of its women and the jobs they can help create. Spreading in every direction except out to sea, the metropolis is home to a quarter of Senegal's 12 million people, with more streaming in from the drought-stricken countryside in recent years.
The capital, like the country, has a massive unemployed youth population. Today 44 percent of Senegal's people are under 15 years old, and 66 percent of these youths do not complete primary school - a total of 1.7 million people without accreditation, 73 percent of women and 59 percent of men, according to Unesco, the UN Education Scientific and Cultural Organization.
A year ago at an innovation forum in New York held by the Rockefeller Foundation, Dakar mayor Khalif Sall identified those demographics as a major challenge to the city's resilience. He said environmental and infrastructure pressures make smart urban planning a necessity. Jobs are central to the success of any plan, and information technology is a key to job creation.
Young and Restless
Alongside rapid urbanization, Senegal is grappling with a host of complex development issues - desertification, shrinking fish stocks, persistent food insecurity and broad infrastructure challenges. Dakar's growing pains include neighborhood flooding, oppressive traffic congestion, and an increasing cost of living that pushes the poorest out of the city, forcing them to make long and costly commutes to work.
"We are facing a very young population," Senegal's Minister of Budget Mouhamadou Mactar Cisse said. "We have two-thirds of the population that is under 25 years old, so there are a lot of expectations from them in regards to education."
Senegal's National Strategy for Economic and Social Development emphasizes incubating and supporting information technology hubs and sensitizing the population to opportunities available in tech sectors. Female empowerment is a priority, Cisse said. "We are witnessing a young generation frustrated by the chronic mismatch between skills and work. The best answer to the economic downturn and youth unemployment is to ensure that young people acquire the basic skills and relevant training they need to enter the world of work with confidence," said Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova.
Unesco recommends that upper secondary curricula in Senegal provide IT skills and focus on lifting up the most disadvantaged--women and the urban and rural poor. "Many people, and young women in particular, need to be offered alternative pathways for an education, so that they can gain the skills needed to earn a living, live in dignity and contribute to their communities and societies," Bokova said.
In order to foster resilience in urban areas, Senegal's government is focusing on building the digital economy, taking care to include youth and women.
That can't come fast enough for the women of Jjiguene. The first African woman to compete in the Microsoft Imagine Cup, a global student technology competition, Dé works with a team of some 15 other women to teach a variety of practical technology skills. Her students are from all walks of life.
"Around the world and certainly in Senegal, you see that women have great potential, but it is not being used," Dé says in a video presentation. "You find women working in agriculture or commerce, but information technology doesn't seem accessible to them."
There are also cultural barriers to gender equality in the workplace - a problem pronounced in technology fields world over, from Dakar to Detroit to Da Nang.
Jjiguene Tech Hub offers starter classes on such topics as PowerPoint and Excel to get women interested in technology, and then emphasizes learning more advanced skills. The Hub encourages university students to take more science courses and offers mentoring to help women become more competitive.
"My real dream is that all women in Senegal and all young girls are capable of using computers and smartphones. That is what my team and I are working for," Dé said.
Other tech organizations across the continent such as Kenya's Akirachix, Tech Needs Girls Ghana, and Nigeria's Women's Technology Empowerment Centre (W-TEC) are working to give African women technology skills and bridge the gender gap.
Senegal's former Minister for Relations with Institutions, Mrs Awa Fall Diop, lobbies for creative solutions to allow girls and women to access better connectivity. "When the question was posed to young people, to find out who among them had a tablet or a mobile phone with a possibility of connection, many did not raise their hands," she said, about a meeting she attended. A girl took the floor to explain that either the youth did not have enough money to buy efficient appliances, or their parents prohibited them from doing so. Diop believes that installing safeguards on connected devices, plus guidance on the possibilities, opportunities and constraints of using information and communication technology, will reassure parents, and young people may have better connectivity and more access.
Lifting the Veil
Jjiguene 'lifted a corner of the veil' on Senegal's commitment to raise women's participation in technology, exemplified by the government's Djiguène Ci Tic – Gender and ICT – project, which aims to reduce the digital gender gap.
The Djiguène Ci Tic examination, launched in April with the financial support of Sonatel, the US embassy in Dakar, Google and Microsoft, is reserved for girls in secondary education and women up to 35.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
"Women who would like to take part must be in groups of three. The group can include a boy, but the idea is that the project should be led by a girl or a woman," said Bitilokho Ndiaye, an official from the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy.
Speaking in Tongues
Among the challenges facing institutions like Jjiguene is language. Most code languages have been developed in English, which few in Francophone west Africa speak well. In order to learn to write programs, would-be engineers must learn some English.
As a further obstacle to inclusion, although French is the official language of business, communications and government in Senegal, many from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds cannot speak it. This makes technical skills acquisition even more difficult, as few training resources are in local languages such as Wolof.
Despite everything, Jjiguene founders are determined. "Recently, we have seen a rise of women coders in Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and DR Congo," Mariéme Jamme wrote on her website, after attending a Global Forum on Innovation & Technology Entrepreneurship in South Africa in August. "But increasing participation and representation of women across the continent is difficult when in many countries women are held back from full and fair participation in public and technological life," she wrote.
"We have to build the pipelines for the next generation of African women leaders, and the only way we can do that is to start finding and creating a good ecosystem for women," said Jamme. Jjiguene aims to be part of that process.
Reporting on African cities and their efforts to build resilience is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.
