Three girls’ teams from Abia State have qualified among the top 20 teams out of two hundred and seventy-nine (279) teams across Nigeria participating in the 2023 season of the Technovation Girls challenge.
Ebere Chiemela, South-East Regional Ambassador of Technovation called for more support for the girl child in technology and equally urged all girls to push their solutions beyond the competition and use their acquired creative skills to initiate changes in society.
The expert described the achievements of the three teams from Abia State as a big one that demands serious attention from both government and well-meaning people from the state, adding that the girsl would join other girls around the world to compete for the World Prize and saand a chance to travel to the San Francisco Bay USA by October 2023.
Chiemela said that Technovation is a programme geared towards equipping the girl child all over the world with Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Problem-solving and most importantly, Technology skills; that’ll help them curb if not totally eradicate some discomforting problems in their immediate environment.
He said that since Since 2010 when the programme began, more than 39,000 girls from over 100 countries have created apps to solve community problems and with the help of volunteer mentors, the girls have produced mobile app startups that have helped address problems in local and global communities.
New Telegraph reports that Technovation is a global technology education nonprofit group that applies a grassroots approach in empowering underserved communities, especially girls and women between eight to eighteen (8-18), to address local problems through cutting-edge technologies.
It was gathered that the girls are grouped into teams (four to five girls can make up a team) and are coached in different designated technological hubs across the state before they will engage other girls from different parts of the world on their creative technology skills.
The Technovation Girls program as gathered, equally equips young girls to become tech entrepreneurs and leaders and with the support of volunteer mentors and parents, the girls work in teams (girls grouped) to code Mobile Apps that address real-world problems.
More facts showed that in the course of their learning, girls have as expected, been educated on how to use technology to create things like Mobile Apps and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to solve community problems.
Over the past 12 weeks, girls (ages 8-18) from different secondary schools in Abia state joined other girls around the world to participate in the 2023 season of the Technovation Girls challenge.
It was learnt that in the 2022 Technovation Girls Challenge that comprised of 1,700 teams, the young girls were able to create Apps to tackle problems related to climate change, domestic violence, women’s equality, poverty and many more.
The 2022 Technovation Girls Challenge as gathers led the young girls to build apps that solve some societal problems ranging from Cardiovascular health challenges, Exam malpractices, Gender-based violence, Culture and Language learning apps, Environmental hygiene by way of plastic recycling, Identification of fake drugs and a lot more, leveraging Technology as a tool.
Chiemela listed the teams participating from the South-East in this year’s Technovation Girls Challenge to include: Team CultureInTech which built an App “Ichaka”, an app promoting the Igbo Language and Culture.
Also part of the teams are Team Diamonds and Team Better Education built mobile app solutions called “Our Voice” an AI-powered platform that is centred on eradicating Human Rights Violations and “E-Mal” aimed at reducing the rate of examination malpractice in our community.
