Laureen Gambino berichtet im Guardian von einem afrikanischen Wettbewerb, in dem sich Mädchen und Frauen von 13 bis 25 Jahren durch brillanten Einsatz von IT-Kenntnissen für Gemeinschaftsprojekte hervortun können.
Die Siegerin bekommt finanzielle Unterstützung für die Realisierung ihres Projekts.
mehr dazu:
Zur Situation in Ruanda:
"[...] The government has set a target of achieving gender parity in the information communications technology sector by 2020, an ambitious goal in a worldwide industry notorious for its lack of diversity. But through educational campaigns, scholarships and mentorship programmes, Rwanda is determined to become a global leader for women in ICT.
“It’s a good place to be a woman in tech right now,” Kunda says of Rwanda.
Before the genocide of 1994, it was uncommon for women in Rwanda to own land, receive a formal education or hold jobs outside of the home. After the atrocity, the country’s surviving population was
60-70% female, according to contemporary accounts.
President Paul Kagame, who has led Rwanda with an iron fist since 2000, realised that advancing women was the only way forward and has championed their rights ever since.
Rwanda now
leads the world in female representation in parliament, due in part to a quota system that reserves seats for women. Gender rights are enshrined in the national constitution and laws were changed to give women the right to inherit land and obtain credit.
As a child, Rosine Mwiseneza, who was orphaned during the genocide, recalls watching the women around her stepping into leadership roles in government and civil society. They became police officers, accountants, butchers, shop owners. Girls went to school and competed alongside boys for internships and scholarships.
Mwiseneza was studying business management at Kepler University in Kigali when she entered the Ms Geek contest in 2016. Her idea was for an automated irrigation system that would help farmers cultivate their fields year-round as opposed to just during the rainy season.
Mwiseneza says she was astounded when she
won the competition. In that moment, she remembered her parents and all the hardships she had endured.
“It was very difficult to believe,” she says. “I started thinking of everything that had passed before that day and I began to cry.”
As well as rapid economic growth and rising standards of living, Rwanda is fast becoming a highly digitised society.
In 2013, the Akilah Institute, Rwanda’s first college exclusively for women, launched a diploma in
information systems. The programme, which started off enrolling just 10 students each year, has expanded sixfold in the five years since it opened. [...]"
(The Guardian 28.5.2018) (englische Wikipedia)
