Ms Chioma Agwuegbo, the Executive Director, TechHerNG, an NGO, says the group will engage 12 sub-urban secondary schools in the FCT and Nasarawa State University with digital skills and online safety training.
She told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja that the training would be under the TechHer School Tour Project.
She said the training would expose more women and girls to the ways technology could enable their daily activities, strengthen their voices and build better and more inclusive communities.
She added that “we also believe that catering to this demography secures the future for the next generation and their use of technology, especially for the girl child.
“So far, we have reached six schools in two Municipal Area Councils of Abuja and recently, both regional education boards gave us the approval to engage 12 more sub-urban secondary schools.
“The new agreement thus ensures that we can provide more girls with digital skills training through the TechHer School Tour Project.
“The TechHer School tour has up-scaled its activities to cover students in tertiary institutions with a pilot training phase underway in Nasarawa State University.”
She explained that through the TechHer School Tour Project, which started in 2019, technologically disadvantaged students, especially girls in Local Education Authority Schools in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, now learn about digital literacy.
Agwuegbo said over 400 students in sub-urban areas had so far been introduced to basic technology, a wide range of career opportunities in technology, and online safety.
“Over 60 per cent of students reached through the digital literacy school tours are girls.
“It was a response to the alarming trend of skill-dearth, mismatch and the consequential declining employability of many young Nigerian graduates,” she said.
The executive director also said that the organisation had provided tech tips, jobs and learning opportunities through its online platforms and built community spaces to educate and increase access to opportunities in tech spaces for the girl-child.
She, therefore, stressed the need for government and stakeholders to encourage more girls from young age to adopt Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses.
According to her, STEM courses will increase spaces for women and girls to flourish within the digital space, bridge gender gap and empower them for personal and social transformation. (NAN)
