Int'l Girls In ICT Day: MTN Ghana Mentors' Young Girls

As the world celebrates the occasion of International Day on ICT, the MTN Ghana Foundation today in partnership with Sorongko Academy on Thursday, April 26, 2018 joined the rest of the world to mark the occasion providing Tech mentorship session with some female students of the La Bawlashie Presby Junior High School in Accra.

International Girls in ICT Day is celebrated annually around the work with the purpose to raise awareness on the growing importance of digital skills to pursue successful professional careers across sectors.

Following the low number of female ICT professional and engineers in the industry, a five member team of female technocrats and engineers from MTN Ghana, shared inspiring career stories in the tech industry and encouraged the young female students to love and challenge themselves in the IT sector.

Georgina Fiagbenu, Senior Manager at MTN Ghana Foundation responsible for sustainable and social impact said, considering the few number of women in ICT, the foundation thinks it is important to get girls to be motivated to do ICT or Technology related courses.

She disclosed that the MTN Ghana Foundation a year ago partnered with two ICT organisations, Soronko Academy and Tech in Women to organize ICT and coding courses for young girls in tertiary institutions.

“The initiative is to get more girls to think about technology careers”.

Madam Fiagbenu added that.. “Basically, we’ve leant that less than 3% of girls are in technology related careers and we want to change the story”, she noted.

The students were also taken through innovation challenge, android app development and presented with certificates after the workshop held at the Soronko Academy at East Legon.

On his part, Corporate Services Executive (ag.) of MTN, Samuel Korangteng stressed that the statistics of female participation in ICT jobs must change.

According to him, more girls should be encouraged to pursue careers in ICT and engineering in Ghana and across the globe.

“The subject of ICT and engineering is not interesting, it also leads to careers that impacts our everyday lives, makes a difference in our family, community, country as well as help make the world a better place”, he stated.

The MTN Ghana Foundation and its partners, Soronko Academy and Tech in Women aims to create an environment for that empowers and encourages girls and young women to consider studies and careers in the rowing field of ICT, enabling both girls and technology companies to reap the benefits of greater female participation in the ICT sector.