Omobola Johnson, Nigeria’s communication technology minister. CC image courtesy of the World Economic Forum, on Flickr.
The current gender divide in ICT means women will be left behind if they are not encouraged to develop an interest in the sector, according to Nigeria’s minister of communication technology Omobola Johnson.
Johnson was speaking at an interactive session with young women undergoing training at the ministry’s 1,000 Girls ICT Training Programme in Abuja, where she said the Nigerian government is committed to empowerment of Nigerian girls and women through its ICT gender empowerment initiatives.
“For us in ICT, this particular programme is important, because when you look at the statistics there is a big gender divide in the world of ICT. And when you look at the way ICT is relevant in all sectors and beginning to take over the way things are done in everything, that gender divide in ICT means that women will be left further behind if we don’t encourage them to embrace ICTs,” she said.
“So what we have is that the Ministry of Communication Technology has three programmes under the GWIN programme and this is one of them and it is called the 1,000 Girls Programme. Here what we have done is to train 1,000 girls from all over the country in ICT skills. We gave them three days of training in basic ICT skills and out of those 1,000 girls, we are selecting the best 200 that showed the most promise with the expectation that they will then continue in the field of ICT, working with any of the IT companies so that they can start their careers in ICT.
“We hope this will contribute to bridging the gender divide. Statistics show that there are 32 percent fewer women online than men in developing economies and what we hope to do here is that by doing this programmes, we are actually starting to close that divide because if we didn’t do this, the divide actually begins to get bigger.”
