The participation of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is really low. UNESCO, among other agencies including the European Commission have called out the under representation of women in STEM fields globally. In Africa, Nigeria specifically, 8% of women are employed in technology jobs.
In an attempt to bridge this gap, Yvonne Onyinye Alozie, founder and Programs Director for GitGirl has identified four reasons that prevents African women from participating and excelling in STEM careers. “I realised the major problems there are to solve; in order to encourage more women in STEM are: Accessibility to affordable courses, Accountability and a support group to help women tackle the challenges that even come with being a working or ambitious woman.” In solving these problems, she has pioneered an initiative Code ‘n Wine which is a flagship of GitGirl range of programmes. Through Code ‘n Wine, women will get accessibility to STEM courses at subsidised rates. According to her, Code N’ Wine coding boot camp prep course exposes you to programming fundamentals in HTML, CSS, JavaScript for Front-end development and the fundamentals of SQL and BI Analytics for Data Analytics. Women will also carry out projects that help build code portfolio, real time collaborative tools that can connect you with fellow students and instructors, and on-demand support from our technical coaches.
Other benefits you can enjoy from Code ‘n Wine include: Free counselling sessions, mentorship from technical instructors, learning support group, opportunity to develop your own product, weekly yoga classes and more. The program offers 24 weeks of full-time/online, intensive instruction (plus pre-work) and it is designed to turn participants into web developers or data analysts for a ₦100,000 tuition fee which is payable as a subscription model of ₦17,500 monthly. The first batch of registration closes 9th November and is scheduled to start on the 12th of November 2018 while the second batch of registration closes 15th November and is scheduled to begin 19th November. The program also offers flexibility for applicants with full-time jobs. For more details on registration, check gitgirls.co/registration
Gitgirl teaches coding to talented young girls while preparing them for careers as developer fellows and software engineers. “We aim to change the lives of African women by giving them the opportunity to access courses that will teach them the skills to land high paying tech roles. We also aim to provide an infrastructure for remote working so most of them work remotely and contribute to developing their communities through Code For Mankind; a data-capture program being developed by Gitgirl that helps homeless & un banked citizens have at least one National ID card and grants them access to subsidised services.”
