Access Bank, U.S. Consulate to empower girls on ICT

As part of measures to support women and girls on Information Communications Technology, Access Bank Plc and United States Consulate recently expressed readiness to support a non-governmental organization, Hacey Health Initiative in training of 57 young girls.

The training would seek to empower women as agents of change and achieving gender equality.

Speaking at a pre-training session tagged: Code4Impact, Project Director, Hacey Health Initiative, Isaiah Owolabi said the training is geared ‎toward addressing the problems of the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs). The programme aims at training young girls as software engineers and ICT entrepreneurs.

According to him, Code4Impact would train young girls between ages of 18 to 30 on how to use programming codes to develop problem-solving applications.
The programme has received technology support from other organizations including Tech 4 Development, Intel and Microsoft.

Within the training, he revealed that the participants will be exposed to knowledge in four key areas which are mobile applications, games applications, web applications and microelectronic applications.
Public Affairs Officer, United States Consulate General, Dehaab Ghebreab, disclosed that their interest in the project was in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the girl child.

“This project was selected out of the over 300 proposals that we received because it is in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Teaching girls is an important step in bringing the technology divide due to the influential role of women in the society,” she noted.

She explained that President Barack Obama has been championing programmes to support Africa through entrepreneurship initiatives such as Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST).