To encourage more females to join the technological work space to help break the notion that Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) is a male-dominated space, CAMFED Ghana has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with AmaliTech Ghana Limited to train young female graduates in technological skills.
Established in 2019, AmaliTech is a social business service company which recruits, trains and employs the next generation of technology leaders in sub-Saharan Africa.
CAMFED on the other hand is a Pan-African movement that is revolutionising how girls education is delivered. It provides financial and social support for marginalised girls to attend and thrive in primary and senior high school.
The partnership
After school, CAMFED provides business training, finance and support for young women to access higher education and employment opportunities so that they can safely transition to a secure and fulfilling adulthood.
The partnership between the two seeks to foster the empowerment of young women with digital skills leading to decent employment opportunities.
With a pool of over 4,000 young women trained in higher education by CAMFED, CAMFED will as part of the MoU make available its network of alumnae to access AmaliTech’s free training in the areas of Digital Innovation Programme (DIP) or Graduate Training Programme (GTP) leading to employment opportunities for them.
Signing the MoU in Accra, the National Director, CAMFED Ghana, Sally Ofori Yeboah, said CAMFED had many young women in rural communities who would want to be trained in ICT skills.
She, therefore, welcomed the collaboration with AmaliTech, saying the training would help the young women acquire decent employment opportunities.
Mrs Yeboah said as part of the agreement, CAMFED would present to AmaliTech the list of youth who were currently in tertiary institutions as well as those who had completed their tertiary education (each year) so that AmaliTech could present to them the various training programmes available.
Gender parity
The Director of Operations, AmaliTech Ghana, Matthew Darkwa, signed for AmaliTech and said since its establishment, the company had trained 400 people in IT software development, IT Software testing, data science, among others.
Currently, he said 150 of the trained youth were in AmaliTech’s employment, adding that the company was one of the biggest IT employers on the market.
Mr Darkwa said one of the company’s vision was to have gender balance in its training and employment opportunities and, therefore, welcomed the collaboration with CAMFED Ghana.
He said presently, only 20 per cent of its team members were female and the target of the company was to have 50-50 opportunities for both sexes.
Through the MoU, he said, the goal of the company was to create employment with technological skills for women both locally and internationally.
He said it was a fact that women tended to avoid technological skills and, therefore, welcomed the idea of boot camps for the young females, stressing it would help introduce them to technological skills to whip up their interest.
“Women in technology need encouragement to be confident,” he said.
As a way of getting young girls interested in technological skills, Mr Darkwa said the company organised boot camps for senior high school students before they got to the tertiary level so that they would get interested in technological subjects.
