Women in Technology in Nigeria has initiated the Technovation Challenge, a mobile app contest for secondary school girls between the ages of 13 and 18.
A statement on Monday said the initiative was part of the International Telecommunications Union’s Girls in ICT project and the Tech Needs Girls campaign.
The participants, according to the statement, will work in teams of five to develop mobile apps, conduct market research, write business plans, and create a “pitch” for funding.
Each team is expected to work with both a classroom teacher at their school and a female mentor/role model from the technology industry.
The statement said WITIN would lead mentors in Nigeria, who would guide teachers to train teams on how to build apps from now till April.
The training will culminate in a global competition where teams will compete for funding to launch their company and take their apps to market.
WITIN Chairman, Mrs Martha Alade, said the goal of the programme was to promote women in technology by inspiring girls to see themselves not just as users of technology, but as inventors, designers, builders, and entrepreneurs in the technology industry.
“The girls are taught life skills such as how to identify a problem, design and test a solution, collaborate with a team, and communicate to different audiences. It reinforces the following academic concepts: digital representation of information, algorithmic thinking and programming, and the societal impact of information and information technology,” she said.
According to her, the girls will be trained for two hours a week to develop a potential solution to a problem and programme a mobile phone application to solve it.
Alade said, “The app must solve a problem in their local community. This could be a health problem that affects their community, a social problem, or even a lack of a resource.
“They will learn how to study their competition, identify ways in which they can gather users and earn revenue. Each team will be guided by a teacher from their school and a female mentor from the high tech industry to support and act as a role model for her team.”