By Babajide Komolafe & Fiyinfoluwa Salami

Technology for Social Change and Development Initiative (Tech4Dev) has unveiled 1,466 successful candidates for the 2023 Women Techsters Fellowship digital empowerment program. 

The successful candidates emerged  from a pool of 14,509 completed applications and 77,000 attempted applications from 15 African countries. The total number of admitted beneficiaries equals about 10 percent of total applications.

The Women Techsters Fellowship is a free experiential technology learning and upskilling program for young girls and women between the ages of 16 to 40 across 15 African countries. Speaking at the announcement press conference, Women Techsters Initiative Lead, Blessing Ashi, revealed that the process of selection was rigorous as the program requires only the best and most dedicated fellows. “We started the registration process in March 2022 and we had three stages of assessments for the beneficiaries.  A total of 1,167 women from Nigeria were admitted into the program out of 10,912 who applied. Kenya had the second highest number of beneficiaries 68 while 48 Ghanaian women were accepted into the program.

“Also  Ethiopia has 32 beneficiaries in the program, Uganda has 29, as 24 South Africans have also been admitted for the 2022/23 calendar year. Egypt has 24, Mozambique 12, Madagascar 12, Tanzania 11, Algeria and Sudan have six apiece. Angola and Morocco have 4 students each in the program while DR Congo has a total of three students in the program. “The women will be trained in Mobile Development, Software Development, Product Design, Product Management, Cybersecurity, Data Science/ Artificial Intelligence Engineering, Blockchain and Mixed Reality/3D.

Co-founder and Executive Director at Tech4Dev, Oladiwura Oladepo, encouraged the beneficiaries to give their 100 per cent to the program, adding that, “our goal is to train 5 million across Africa by 2030”.