
Siemens backs coding club launch for girls across Africa
Siemens has partnered with UN Women Germany through the African Girls Can Code Initiative (AGCCI) to train girls and young women in Africa in digital and further skills.
The company has made €780,000 available to enhance employability and will provide laptops to all participants in order to support coding camps focused on digital literacy, coding, personal development and work readiness skills.
A hybrid event in Johannesburg kicked off a training program for over 600 young women across South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Rwanda and Uganda. This is based on a six month mentoring program “SieMent EmpowHer,” developed by Siemens South Africa, where the young women will spend a whole day with their experienced female mentors from around the world.
The UN Women – African Girls Can Code Initiative (AGCCI) will train young women between the ages of 17 and 25 in digital literacy, programming and work-readiness skills to become programmers, coders and designers.
After the two-week AGCCI curriculum, the EmpowHer Africa program begins which includes coding as well as further digital and work readiness skills in specific workshops. The learning content goes from cybersecurity, through to career options in IT to low coding. The program is further supported by SieMent EmpowHer.
“We are pleased to partner with UN Women Germany to undertake concerted and systematic action to create development opportunities, particularly for girls and young women, and to address the disadvantages they face. I’m confident that this program will help break down the barriers of entry on the continent, facilitate access to education and technology, and heed the call to address gender inequalities,” said Sabine Dall’Omo, CEO of Siemens Sub-Saharan Africa.
Elke Ferner, President UN Women Germany said: “We’re thrilled to have partnered with Siemens to invest in the education and empowerment of girls in Africa – a crucial driver of sustainable development in the continent. By working together, we can enable young women to develop future-oriented competencies in a protected environment and empower them with the skills needed to succeed at national and international levels. Most importantly, we raise awareness that taking a stand for women’s rights and educational equality is a social duty for all of us.”
“With the introduction of SieMent EmpowHer, we will help bridge the gap between academia and the workplace. By empowering and upskilling young women through mentorship across the African continent, we will help improve their employability by equipping them with a set of skills that will help them generate an income, develop resilience, and contribute to the reboot of transformative growth in Africa,” said Dall’Omo.
“I am proud to see our company’s continued commitment to the development of young African women who don’t necessarily have access to skills development opportunities like these. For a country like South Africa and many others in Sub-Sahara Africa, youth unemployment remains a barrier to progress in the region,” said Natalia Oropeza, Chief Cybersecurity and Chief Diversity Officer of Siemens AG. “Teaming up with UN Women on this initiative is helping us to enable young women to gain access to technology, while indirectly addressing the issue of inequality,” she added.
unwomen.de/ (available in German only); www.siemens.com/global/en/company/sustainability/diversity.html
