Despite ongoing efforts to empower more African women to join the technology sector, and some promising recent signs of a surge of female-led businesses, the digital health sector in Nigeria, like the digital health sector globally, is still largely dominated by men.
The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently found that women make up just 30 per cent of the total number of tech jobs in the country, and according to the Financial Institutions Training Centre, just 22 per cent of graduates from Nigerian universities majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are female.
The limited involvement in digital health is particularly concerning, especially given women's significant contributions to the health sector. In Nigeria, "women constitute the majority of medical doctors and nursing and midwifery personnel, with data from 2018 reporting that 65% of medical doctors and 87% of nursing personnel were women."
In mid-2021, the Data for Implementation (Data. FI) team in Nigeria grew increasingly concerned about the lack of gender diversity they witnessed.
"Many qualified men apply for digital health positions," explains Otse Ogorry, the Data.FI/Nigeria Country Lead, however "to find women for these positions we realized we had to take deliberate steps."
Subsequently, the team began to design an internship programme to hire and upskill female applicants, with the eventual aim of transitioning successful candidates into full-time employment, either at Data.FI or another organisation in the sector.
Three years on, the team sat down with current and past interns, as well as with the mentors and supervisors who help facilitate the internship, to learn how the programme was designed and implemented. These interviews were also an opportunity to reflect on what the programme had achieved and hear from participants why improving gender equality is so important. These are some of the key insights from the programme.
1. Designing a Gender-transformative Programme
The programme began by deliberately reaching out to potential female applicants who were already involved or had expressed interest in the digital health space in Nigeria, using social media and personal networks and reviewing past job postings for resumes of female applicants who applied for jobs within Data.FI.
Ogorry, the Country Lead, helped steer the early hiring efforts, noting that "cutting through the CVs with deliberation works, as we found that women did have the qualifications and skills to succeed if we took the time to focus on their applications."
Data.FI/Nigeria's HR lead Opeyemi Omilabu added that jobs in digital health are "circulating the same set of people, so the internship program needed to give a real opportunity for new people to enter the space."
Faced with the reality of a digital health gender imbalance, however, the team needed to go beyond simply trying to hire more women; they would have to craft meaningful mentorship mechanisms and integrate upskilling into the program.
As Ikechukwuka Abah, technical advisor and one of the lead intern supervisors, explained, "There is a perception that the [digital health] space is only for men," and "few women are allowed to gain experience in the sector."
As part of this effort, they designed the programme so that each intern would be assigned a specific mentor to be nested within the broader technical team. As Nonye Nwanya, another Data.FI supervisor, put it, interns needed to be "given the right path to develop...because they would come in green and inexperienced, so we would need to build their confidence and let them know that learning is something that is an everyday thing."
"Direct mentoring is a powerful way to learn and grow," says Chisom Ohazurume, who led the interviews and helped design the programme . "By working closely with experienced mentors, interns could see firsthand how tasks are completed, challenges are overcome, and relationships are built."
Another point of early emphasis was the incorporation of a long-term, post-internship perspective, emphasising the importance of creating 'ambassadors' that could go out into other corners of Nigeria's digital health sector and inspire women to get involved. To accomplish this, there needed to be a chance for full-time employment after the internship finished.
In these ways, the programme moved beyond gender-neutral or gender-sensitive programming. The goal was to design a truly gender-transformative programme, an initiative that both addressed the root causes of gender inequality and factored in the disparities inherent in the sector.
An example of the gender programming continuum, which depicts the progression from gender unaware to gender transformative programs, largely in international development contexts. This is the 'Gender Marker' used by CARE. Source: https://www.care.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Gender-Marker_overview.pdf
2. Hitting the Ground Running
These were the goals of the programme, but how would all this work in practice?
It was quickly apparent that, despite their initial lack of experience, the first cohort of interns showed grit and a willingness to learn. Indeed, it was precisely because of their youth and their awareness that not many women get opportunities within the sector, that the interns were eager to contribute to the team's mission.
Jenne Kamara, one of the first interns, echoed this idea, noting "women are more involved and invested in health risks, as they are often disproportionately affected by epidemics and associated health risks. Because of this, I know more women would want to get involved with digital health if the opportunity arises."
"When the interns came in, they were always open to learning as much as they can, open to taking more responsibility, taking more challenging positions," says Omilabu. And while this eagerness was essential per se, it also yielded practical results. Airoje Ojemeiri, a senior manager, found that several interns "quickly played valuable roles, improved greatly, and contributed to team quotas."
Mentorship was another early success, especially because it didn't only benefit the interns. Abah notes that the interns not only helped to ease workload but also helped spark critical reflection. "When you have to explain it to somebody else, you realize there is much work [involved] in understanding this thing I think I know," he added, highlighting the reciprocal benefits of the mentoring process.
3. Challenges
The program was meant to be iterative, with tweaks and adjustments taking place with each new cohort. And as one cohort succeeded the next, there were definitely growing pains. One consistent theme among several interns to whom we spoke was that the programme could have been "more structured."
Damilola Momodu shared, "when I started it was July, things were slow, and people had other priorities, so I basically did self-learning through that period. My mentor Nonye shared courses with me and we did some stuff together. But when the work intensified, I realised I needed more tools and apps on my laptop, and for a while I fell behind."
"Everyone has their specific work to do, and everybody is busy," said Favour Ijirgba, so "I feel like I'm disturbing when I ask questions."
Other interns suggested that collective mentoring sessions could be formalized with more recurring sessions and learning opportunities.
Despite the early intentionality around mentoring, the team acknowledges that more can be done to improve preparation and provide further support. Nwanya argues that "it's very important to educate the staff on the importance or coaching and mentoring and the importance of providing an enabling environment for everyone."
Kamara, who is currently being considered for a full-time role, proposed a dedicated committee approach: "there should be a special committee that manages [the interns], and that oversees the internship programs. And this should be a two-person committee with both genders represent[ed]. So apart from them managing the onboarding process, they can serve as ongoing guidance counselors to the interns alongside their assigned mentors."
4. The Impact
These challenges have been embraced, and Data.FI Nigeria is currently revising its internship programme to make it more robust and better able to address the growing needs of both new intakes and women into the programme.
With two cohorts past and a third currently ongoing, the impact of the programme has been promising. The first had four interns, while the second and third each hired two interns. Half of these interns have since been hired full-time, and two more slots are currently being recruited for in 2025.
Moreover, the internship program has already contributed to greater gender balance and social responsibility within the Data.FI/Nigeria team.
"We've made some significant impact attracting and developing female talent," explains Omilabu, adding that "the Internship program has given us that opportunity to make a better impact giving the female candidates more opportunities to come into this sector."
The establishment of gender diversity has definitely been "very important," says Ojemeiri, "as the culture change has helped to breed sustainable growth internally, which in turn helps to produce more valuable evidence-based results. Given the area we work in, health is always gender sensitive." Indeed, "if you take a look at establishment or organisation that have this gender mix, you see they have high level of quality products [that have] been produced overtime."
Also, despite being relatively small-scale, the programme has helped slowly improve gender equity with Nigeria's digital health sector, as interns moved on to other organizations or shared their experiences online.
One intern felt like women's representation in the digital health space was improving and that "more women are willing to come in." Another shared that she saw every woman on Data.FI as a mentor who "gave her a sense of confidence."
As Abah pointed out, incorporating women into the internship programme has dispelled the notion that the digital health sector is solely for men. "The internship programme incorporating women has created some ambassadors who would... reach out to other females to be a part of what we are doing in the space."
Boroleni Dah, a former intern who has since taken on a full-time role within Data.FI, argued that "the internship experience supported gender equality. I believe our organisation really put a lot of effort into closing those gaps, especially in a country like Nigeria that is still trying to catch up with the world in terms of gender equality."
"For every intern we build, or we mentor within the [Data.FI] space... we are actually building potential program managers, programme directors, leaders who certainly will be able to speak in the future for Palladium at one point or the other," Ojemeiri remarked.
Lastly, a crucial measure of the programme's success was its commitment to hiring interns as full-time staff whenever possible. Omilabu stresses that this was not a matter of tokenism, but a testament to the women's qualifications:
"As much as the organisation is keen on hiring former interns as full-time employees, there is also a need to ensure that former interns meet all of the requirements and demands of the recruitment process. We always considered first whether the individual demonstrated the ability to handle the position or a higher position in the course of the internship programme."
The benefit was undeniable. Hiring interns full-time filled holes in the project's team and improved operational efficiencies. "It's a great benefit to engage interns as full-time staff because...they already have the definition, culture, and values," Ojemeiri emphasized. This reduces onboarding time and increases staff retention, as noted by multiple interviewees.
Hiring interns full-time also increased the role-model impact of the women involved in the programme.
Chidinma Ogbonna, another full-time employee who came out of the programme, stresses that a "dedication to hard work and putting your best out there" won her a role, and now she is mentoring the interns who have come after her.
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"I try to mentor [our interns]. I put them through all of our processes. I also tell them to put in their best, because then the sky is the limit. I also see women are coming up in the [digital health] space. When we started, I think the first boot camp that year, we had like three women and almost 60 men or so. I can see that now when we come for gatherings, we have more women [and] the numbers are increasing more than what we had when I started the internship."
5. The Road Ahead
The underrepresentation of women in digital health won't change overnight.
Dah acknowledges that there remains much to do: "There are a lot more women [in digital health], but there ain't enough women yet. We still have a lot of catching up to do with our male counterparts in that regard."
But improving things is not just a matter of fairness; it's a matter of effectiveness. When women are involved in designing and implementing digital health solutions, these solutions are more likely to address the specific needs of women and girls. This, in turn, leads to better health outcomes for entire communities.
In an international development context where 'localisation' is all the rage, it is also important to emphasize that this program is an example of what 'locally led' actually looks like and what country teams can accomplish if given the chance. After all, Data.FI/Nigeria led the way in conceptualizing, developing, and implementing the internship programme.
This is a sterling example of local actors knowing their own contexts best, and being best placed to initiate and sustain change. It is unlikely that an internship program originating in Washington and imposed on Abuja would have gained much traction. However, by empowering in-country teams to launch their own programmes, important initiatives targeting equity or sustainability have the requisite buy-in from the start. In the case of the Nigeria internship program, that was crucial.
Lastly, the success of this program demonstrates what gender-transformative programming means in practice.
We have already noted the gender disparities in Nigeria's technology industry, which are not only detrimental to women's empowerment, but also hamper the growth of the industry. And compounding the problem, female unemployment in Nigeria has risen from 3.7% in 2011 to 8.8% in 2021.
Women-led tech start-ups can help reach women and girls who've been left behind. By focusing on both technical and soft skills, providing strong mentorship, and addressing the unique challenges faced by women in the digital health space, the programme is helping to build a more inclusive and effective sector. With ongoing improvements and sustained commitment, it has the potential to continue empowering women and driving significant change in the digital health landscape.
As Momodu put it, "gender equality is not just about having women in spaces; it's having women in spaces where they can actually make a difference and make a change."
