Even though there is a need to fill jobs in Ethiopia’s high-tech industry, talented Ethiopian women have trouble accessing the training needed to meet market demands.
(Impact at IFC) – Semhal Tekleab is only 20 years old, but she’s already pursuing a career developing apps for Android phones. It wasn’t a hard choice. “The future is mobile,” she explains, matter-of-factly.
Before Semhal* discovered Gebeya, an Ethiopian company that trains, hires, and cultivates IT talent in Africa—and which is now training her in her chosen field—her own future was less certain. In Ethiopia, where she was born and raised, gender stereotypes persist, and girls don’t always have the opportunity to continue learning after high school. This has implications for Ethiopia’s high-tech industry: Even though there is a need to fill jobs, talented Ethiopian women have trouble accessing the training needed to meet market demands.
Gebeya’s training programs for Ethiopian women like Semhal help close that gender gap so that Ethiopia can become more competitive—with the equal participation of all of its citizens. Gebeya’s Digital Gender-Ethiopia Program, which provides scholarships to train 250 female software developers and offers seed funding to 20 female entrepreneurs, targets the gender disparity in the areas of technology and innovation. The project launched in March with funding from the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Creating Markets Advisory Window and IFC’s Disruptive Technologies & Funds Gender Program, funded through the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi).
The women entrepreneurs selected for the Digital Gender-Ethiopia Program receive technical and strategic guidance on business development from Gebeya. The funds support mentorship programs from globally recognized digital entrepreneurs. The project enables Gebeya to expand its scope beyond the current tuition model and include promising female software developers who, without the scholarships, would not be able to afford the training.
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For Gebeya’s chief executive officer and co-founder, Amadou Daffe, the program fills a critical continent-wide need. “African women constitute 50 percent of Africa’s population but only contribute 39 percent to its Gross Domestic Product,” he says. “This is a result of their inability to afford tuition, societal misconception around women and career ability, inadequate familial support, as well as gender stereotypes. We can no longer stand back and watch as intelligent, capable African women are pushed to the sidelines. We have to do our part to close the gender gap in technology where females are highly underrepresented.”
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