In commemorating International Women’s Day (IWD) 2023, experts in the Nigerian tech space has reaiterated the importance of educating girls on the advantages of the use of technology in closing the digital gender gap in the country.
This was stated in celebration of the 2023 IWD, themed, ‘DigitALL: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality’ held on Tuesday 7 March, at the special Correctional Center for Girls in Mushin, Lagos.
Soibi Ovia, partner and head of litigation, Duale, Ovia and Alex-Adedipe (DOA), said that the first point of call in bridging the technology gap is education.
According to her, young girls must be made to understanding the effect of technology and its uses, and how it connect to their every day life.
“We also know that as women, your major battle in the future is work life balance. And technology has come to aid you in balancing the woman’s home life and her quests to chase her professional career,” said Ovia.
According to her, the choice of the correctional centre for girls will help in connecting the DOA initiative of empowering women with young girls towards bridging the gender gap.
“Today we’ve met with young girls between the ages 14 and 18. And we are here to inform them about the advent of technology and then the advantages of technology to bridge the gap of gender inequality.
“As young girls and as women, we must continue to educate ourselves. We must continue to adopt innovative means of staying in the game,” Ovia said.
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Jessica Anuna, founder/CEO, Kiasha, said it is important to empower young girls towards understanding the transformational power of technology to their lives.
According to her, young girls must know the importance of leveraging technology in bridging the digital gap for gender equity by believing in its transformative processes.
“I’m also looking forward as I continue on my journey, towards showing them what is possible for using technology to transform lives,” Anuna said.
Ife Durosinmi-Eti, CEO, Herconomy, a Nigerian FinTech company, said bridging the technology gap will encourage more girls into the sector by exposing them to different career paths in technology.
Durosinmi-Eti, whose firm focuses on savings for women and ensuring women understand the benefits imbedded in growing their income and be better with their money said, understanding the tech ecosymystem at a young age will be more beneficial for the girls.
“I’m very excited about this program today because we’re catching them young. As a very young lady myself when I was very young, I couldn’t save money. I didn’t really know a lot about finances. At the time. It wasn’t something that was really discussed and I saw how it affected me later on in life,” she said.
She also thanked DOA for the initiative and the donations it made towards bridging the technology gap in the correctional centre. “So, I know that because of what we’ve done today; we’ll see more women get into technology,” Durosinmi-Eti said.
