Microsoft Philanthropies in Middle East and Africa focused on closing the gender gap
International Women’s Day celebrates the social, economic, political, and cultural achievements made by women and the continued efforts of us all to strive for gender equality in all areas. We know we have a lot of work to do to encourage gender equality, so we have committed to do our part.
MEA Philanthropies is focused on positively impacting as many women as possible by building their tech capacity and providing equal opportunities for them to excel in STEM-enabled careers to become the leaders of tomorrow.
In MENA, women comprise 21 percent of the labour force and contribute just 8 percent to the region’s GDP. The gender gap has far-reaching implications across all areas of the economy, extending to the technology sector and negatively impacting women’s access to technology services.
Microsoft skills and employability partnership initiatives empowers women with digital skills
Yildiz from Turkey, after having been out of work for four years, participated in a .NET Core Bootcamp through Kodluyoruz. With her newfound technical skills, she ultimately found a job as a developer in Bursa. Launched by Microsoft Turkey and the Kodluyoruz Association in 2018, these bootcamps provide intensive software training for young women, with more than 30% of participants finding employment immediately after completing the programme.
Hagar from Egypt built her digital skills through the Tawar w 3’ayar initiative. Through that experience, she became a Digital Skills trainer at the directorate of Ministry of Youth in Damietta. Tawar w 3’ayar provides training in many programmes, including technology, programming, career advising, web design, human-centred design, and social entrepreneurship. Since 2014, 690,000 youth have graduated from the training.
For all of these programmes, Microsoft ensures equal participation with a minimum of 50% representation by women.
Scalability through Partnerships
A key strategy for MEA Philanthropies to scale these programmes is through several partnerships in both private and public sectors.
A prime example of how we scale is with the Nigerian Women Techsters programme. To date, the programme has trained over 2,400 individual women to code with roughly 70% starting careers in tech.
Due to overwhelming success, the programme was one of the ten projects showcased at the 2019 UN Solutions Summit, an annual United Nations’ initiative that rewards exceptional teams who present innovative solutions to advance Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Endorsed by the UN, aided by Microsoft, and with the prospect of obtaining UNESCO’s support, Tech4Dev is currently outlining its long-term plan to expand the Women Techsters initiative to reach 5 million women across 15 countries in Africa. This is set to launch later this month to further empower more African women to make a difference as future technology innovators.
Please stay connected with us to learn more as we continue to build and develop partnership initiatives that create sustainable and systemic change for women in MEA.
