Her name is Ivy Barley. She is a young lady who have beaten all the odds to make her country Ghana and Africa proud. Barley made it to the front row of German newspapers by winning the prestigious ‘E-Skills for Girls Competition’ in Berlin. She won the first prize of €15,000, got a mentorship from Google and also had the opportunity to meet German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
She is a leader and an example of a perfect role women play in the computer or ICT world. She started the “Developers in Vogue”, a social enterprise that connects skilled female developers and improves the digital skills of girls and women.
Her business stands to inspire a lot of women globally especially in the coding field of ICT.
Whiles more and more women are venturing into the tech sector, there is still unbalanced ratio of gender in the digital world. It is estimated that about 71% African girls and women will not get online by the beginning of the year, 2020. A lot of women in Africa do not see the hidden benefits of technology and as a fact, creates a developmental lag in their society.
It is on several agencies including government in Africa to empower women to take advantage of technology. Various individual organizations are also key to support the African girl child or woman to see what a life changing technology can have on their lives.
There are vast number of skills a girl or woman in Africa can partake and among them are coding, digital- enabled financial management, web designing/ writing and critical analysis.
Like Ivy, girls have major advantage over men when it comes to IT. They can lead companies and invent great ideas through the coding perspective. This makes them highly stable and relevant in the current state of the imbalanced gender scale.
Ivy’s innovation has generated a greater challenge to women to stand to their feet since her company has created opportunities for the universal gender. Her achievement is worth to be celebrated especially by younger ladies who want to succeed just like her.
Sourve: ghmarv.com
African Youth Corner 