By Andrew Wasike
NAIROBI, Kenya (AA) – Kenyan women in the tech industry were honored Monday by America's Vogue magazine for their role in the technology industry in Africa.
“A group of Kenyan women is working to increase the visibility and influence of women in tech by providing the mentorship and skills that young women need to not only succeed in one of the most competitive tech markets in the developing world but have their contributions recognized as well,” said Vogue, a monthly fashion and lifestyle magazine.
The women include Linda Kamau, a co-founder of Akirachix, a coding school founded in 2010 by a group of women who were passionate about changing the landscape of the technology field and creating a community that supports, connects and inspires women in the tech space.
Linda told Vogue: “When you give women a fair chance, they thrive. Women who have gone through our program only needed someone to show them a path, and then they took it and ran with it.”
Fatima Mohamed Abdulkadir, who graduated from Akirachix, told Vogue that the tech industry used to be a male-dominated field.
“It used to be such a boys club, but now we are able to run women-only hackathons and have people participate. We gave the women confidence to do the other hackathons open to everyone.”
The young women under Linda Kamau challenged the status quo by encouraging and facilitating more women to take up careers in technology-related fields.
Other female coders honored by Vogue magazine include Ory Okolloh Mwangi and Chao Mbogho, an award-winning computer science researcher and educator.
Mbogho found KamiLimu, a non-profit organization, whose mission is to bridge the skills gap between classroom learning and global competitiveness through structured mentorship in personal and professional development, innovation skills, and scholarship expertise.
