Dr. (Mrs.) Omowunmi Hassan, currently lead consultant and managing director of HOJOB Consults Ltd – ICT training and Policy Analysis consultancy firm in Nigeria, is also the chief executive and presiding officer of High Tech Centre for Nigerian Women and Youth – an NGO established to empower and build the capacity of women and youths in ICT across Nigeria.
An IT professional per excellence, she has worked at various IT positions in reputable Organizations.
Hassan, with a lot of publications in several journals to her credit, spoke to peter ugwu on issues regarding women and youths in IT-Nigeria.
Setting Up of High Tech Centre
The gap in ICT and the digital divide among the gender changing information and communications technologies (ICT) around the world brings, and the challenges these have brought to developing countries, information and knowledge sharing or dissemination has become a more pressing problem for the women-folk and younger ones in Africa, especially in the West African region.
Hence, the beginning of our initiative to bridge the digital gap between men and women literacy in ICT taking cue from the Ghanaian High Tech Women in the early 2000.
I was challenged in March 2004 during the International ICT Conference in Ghana on capacity building interventions for women and girls’ involvement in ICT, the Nigerian High Tech Women was therefore born in May 2004 at Ile-Ife, Osun State.
The Set Objectives
The primary vision as at the beginning of our creation was to reach out to women and girls in Nigeria through awareness / literacy campaign, workshops, summits on ICTs and computer usage while providing information on ICT access opportunities in different places like market, hospitals, Local government areas, etc.
The organization however, metamorphosed into High Tech Centre for Nigerian Women and Youths in 2012, after a rigorous status and nomenclature changes necessitated by the feared digital divide between the gender (male and female) which established us and was then seen to be marginalizing the capacity building interventions against the ‘boy child’.
This births the incorporation of ‘youth initiatives’ to accommodate the empowerment of both sexes in ICTs among the younger and upcoming generation through our engagements and activities.
The various categories of women from the academia/professionals, public/civil servants, private sector, business / entrepreneurs, women in rural communities and girls in schools was identified as targets of our intervention, thus the justification for the strategic goals and aspirations of the organization.
With a focused vision and mission statement, the initiative to catch – them young started the outreach of the NGO to schools by establishing ICT Clubs in Schools as well as creating Clubs in Local Government Areas around Ile-Ife town in Osun State of Nigeria then.
The youth incorporation birthed the ICT Summer Academy Camp (ISAC) for Youths (male and females) from ages 15 while the school seminars is for primary and secondary school children was tagged Children ICT Summit (CIT).
Furthermore, we were able to strategically map out how to reach our targets by planning initiatives that address various categories of women and youths. Such includes, workshop for wives and women leaders at the States and Local Government Areas (LGAs) tagged Women Leaders Forum (WLF).
Professionals and women in the public and private sector of the economy are gathered to a special summit tagged “Women ICT Summit” (WITS) yearly; the first edition was held in 2012 and has since been a national event. To support ICT and computing skills development of female students in tertiary institutions, the Ladies ICT Summit (LITS) was initiated to reach out to all ladies in tertiary institutions in the country.
With the global advocacy for innovation and industrial development of national economies and with the identification of ICT, and indeed science and technology as a driver of technological changes, we have deliberately upgraded our children and youth initiatives for all sexes including the ladies summit to a new dimension with emphasis on ‘Innovation’ and ‘development in a knowledge economy’.
Hence, our projects for the sect are tagged “e-innovate Nigeria – Stop Downloading… Start Uploading” to encourage the younger generation to think inventions, create products, services, indeed become innovative and entrepreneurial for self sustenance, wealth / job creation to be able to build a sustainable Nigerian economy that can meet up with the national goal of Vision 20:2020.
The High Tech Awards
The High Tech Awards for Women and Youths started in 2012 as part of the activities of the Women ICT Summits yearly.
It has since been an exciting and elating initiative that has created more awareness of ICT and its impacts as well as facilitated the involvement of prominent, entrepreneurs and visionary young Nigerians to our programmes as they partner to foster more impactful engagements with the NGO.
To conform with global initiatives and career development of women and girls in ICTs, the High tech Centre for Nigerian Women and Youths identified with the ITU international Day of Girls in ICT celebrated worldwide in April every year, and has since been hosting the “Girls in ICT” day since 2013 as a day to sensitize the society of the need to build ICT career in women and girls as well as the social inclusion of the women folks in ICT mainstream internationally.
Capturing Women’s Attention to Embrace Certain IT Programmes
Women attention is drawn to quite a lot of things and the truth is that to get women to do things requires a lot of incentives, advocacies, awareness and encouragements.
We need to create funds, time, opportunities / strategies for them to get involved by supporting them to pay for the trainings available in ICTs (you know most trainings nowadays is not free especially where there is no sponsorship from donor organizations), government must be willing to partner with NGOs who are able to reach out to the grassroots to implement any and all of their initiatives for women and girls.
This for me is a way of getting more women to know, understand and be willing to run with government’s programs.
As a matter of fact, government formulate policies, create programs but leave the projects to NGOs, Private institutions and other interest groups to implement so as to get better results and facilitate partnerships.
Economic Buoyancy as a Major Factor that Must be Tackled to Attract Their Attention
Yes, I agree not just thinking. I do know that most women (married) depend on their husbands support financially; while a lot more (unmarried and single mothers) are struggling or managing their meager resources.
Thus, funds to get ICTs, attend trainings, and have access to the internet are quite challenging. They need support as much as possible.
Strategies Adopted By High Tech so Far In Galvanizing Women Interest in IT
High Tech has over the years evolved from free trainings / seminars for women to getting States and Local Government Areas support through sponsorship of women to our programs and now, some Agencies of the Government like National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has been supportive in the areas of funding some of our projects for youths and girls but a lot is still needed to do more.
We charge fees (just a token) most times to be able to break even and get knowledge transfer to our target. You know we are not for profits organization. We need nation and international organizations to support these initiatives.
Women’s Interests in ComTech Ministry’s Roadmap for IT Development
The minister is trying so much with the roadmaps in place but the strategic need of the country is to have a well articulated ICT Policy with actionable frameworks, concise key performance indicators (KPIs) for monitoring procedures and a full back-up legislation and Acts for effective implementation.
This is imperative for her efforts for the industry to be measurable and more impactful. As regards women and girls in ICT initiatives, I think they are trying but the Ministry cannot do it alone.
They are facilitators, provider of enabling environment and motivator, so they should partner with more women NGOs with different capacities and capabilities to create more initiatives and achieve their already set goals so as to get things done at all levels.
The ministry should set the right directions through policies guidelines and facilitate networking for result based implementation of their policy strategies and programmes.
Cost of the Centre’s Programme to Educate and Equip a Person in IT
In terms of cost, it is relative based on various projects. The children’s e-Innovate events is free for pupils and students from primary / secondary schools but with the introduction of school ICT competitions, schools are required to pay a token of N15,000 (fifteen thousand naira) to participate.
The Youth Summits and Camp is on the average of N 25,000 (twenty five thousand naira), Women ICT Summit is about N50,000 (fifty thousand naira) on the average yearly because of the target group, (we actually save cost to support our children’s project yearly) and the international exchange programme costs is dependent on country to be visited.
We plead for financial support for any or all of these initiatives to enable more women and youths to benefit across States, Local governments, communities and indeed the entire country.
Girls in Decision Making Positions In IT Field
Sure, more than optimistic because we are getting there gradually, women, ladies and girls at all levels are able and we CAN!