Apps and Girls
The digital gender divide is egregiously high in Tanzania, Girls and women face multiple obstacles preventing them from accessing education, digital infrastructure, IT skills training (basic digital literacy and specialized IT training), and employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. Yet, as societies and economies undergo the digital transition, there is a growing demand (from companies and entire sectors) for individuals with IT skills enabling them to work in technology-rich environments and ICT-related employment.
Our program provides high quality, advanced IT training (including web programming, mobile app development and graphics) for young women. We also Provide entrepreneurship training for young women to increase women's entrepreneurship skills through capacity building, and promote the inclusion of more women in entrepreneurial activities and other economic activities in Sub-Saharan Africa. We believe that digital skills training can boost women’s ability to access the formal labor market and launch and manage sustainable enterprises.
In Tanzania, 76% of girls are missing out on secondary school, often due to pregnancy and early marriage (Room to Read, 2016). When this happens, they are not able to continue with education, pursue their careers ambitions and achieve their own dreams, Their future is completely stolen from them. During the COVID-19 Crisis, the Tanzanian government called a national closure for all academic institutions to prevent the spread of the disease, in three months It was reported that 100 girls have been impregnated in the Ruvuma region. As the Tanzanian constitution doesn’t allow impregnated girls back to school, all these girls' educational journeys have ended.
This problem doesn’t just exist in Tanzania, a UNICEF article states that “Around the world, 132 million girls are out of school” , Pregnancy and Early are not the only reasons for this but also lack of sanitation, poor families, wars and natural disasters, disabilities and more contributes to keeping girls out of school. Even though there are a number of barriers, most of these girls and young women still long for a second chance at education and at life, they wish to be educated, economically independent and fulfill their potential.
Apps and Girls provides advanced coding training, entrepreneurship training, mentorship, and incubation program for out of school marginalized girls and young women to be able to participate in the formal employment sector, notably in ICT-related employment or be able to create their own tech-based enterprises in Tanzania and subsequently in other Sub-Saharan African countries thus elevating women’s socio-economic empowerment.
Our program provides on demand IT skills and competency in the workplace market and business through:
Provision of Advanced IT and Entrepreneurship training -Prior to the advanced TECH training they spend 1 month taking precoding sessions and are later grouped into three groups (Web design and development, Graphics and app development) according to their interests and capability and spend 5 months undertaking these trainings concurrently with Entrepreneurship.
Provision of mentorship and incubation -After the trainings % of the girls are job placed in different companies while others spend more six months mentorship and Incubation program both online via our virtual mentorship and e-learning platform (https://www.codegalaxy.co.tz/) and offline which includes access to indispensable resources (support for business plans, crowdfunding, access to potential investors/funders, loans and mentoring) to support the successful launch and scale-up of their IT-based enterprises.
The project directly targets young women, aged 17-24, from underprivileged communities in Tanzania who are out of school and unemployed or whose families live below the poverty line ($1.90 per capita/per day as defined by the World Bank). Our project addresses the social, economic and digital exclusion of young women from poor communities in Tanzania, in geographical areas where access to such training, employment and entrepreneurship opportunities would, otherwise, be extremely limited or inexistent. Every cohort we conduct a need assessment for the girls and the potential employment partners in the markets.
The program enables young women to acquire advanced IT skills, enabling them to work in ICT-related employment or set up their own tech-based (social) enterprises. We also boost women's entrepreneurship skills through capacity building, and promote the inclusion of more women in entrepreneurial activities and other economic activities in Tanzania: According to the UNDP’s Africa Human Development Report (2016), “significant economic and workplace disparities between African men and women continue to be the norm rather than the exception” (p.73). We also provide a range of start-up support services for women-owned and led enterprises in Tanzania, increasing the potential for their success.
- Strengthen competencies, particularly in STEM and digital literacy, for girls and young women to effectively transition from education to employment
Our solution mostly relates to the first and second dimension since we champion education and learning opportunities in STEM especially in technology for girls dropouts who would otherwise never go back to school or get an opportunity to acquire any form of education. Another chance to education gives them the knowledge, skills, confidence to acquire job opportunities and emancipate themselves economically.
- Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth
- A new business model or process
One of our competitor is called SheCodes, they teach coding to girls and women but they do not have a specific program that targets girls dropouts and therefore most girls from our target group doesn't afford their programs which leave Apps and Girls as a best option for them.
We are also invested in empowering these girls and young women so that they could become independent and gain back their dignity in society. Therefore, we ensure that they receive mentorship and incubation to enable them to launch their tech business or conduct job placement whereby our supporters and interested companies and organizations find suitable employees from our students pool.
We utilise a method of teaching where we teach these girls and young women about IT including web development, mobile app development, games and animations and graphics designs. They explore how to build softwares and hardwares for daily classwork, school projects and their business and social ideas. From time to time especially the during the Covid-19, the trainings have been conducted online in our e-learning platform for our student called Code Galaxy .
For this program, we have a partner called Women's World Wide Web( W4) and we are running an online incubation with the girls in the program with the partner, the online incubation is a website where girls are able to receive mentorship and incubation with W4 from international mentors and experts.
The girls in our program have developed over 30 concrete tech-driven business ideas, 15 of which are being implemented. 8 of the projects have already received loans in partnership with our partner W4. Our Protégées are now role models in the community. Here are some of their tech startups:
SEE Article here:
- Software and Mobile Applications
This project aims to address/offers a solution to overcome/alleviate women’s social, economic and digital exclusion in underprivileged communities in Tanzania and proposes an innovative, comprehensive IT and entrepreneurship training and digital women’s entrepreneurship incubation program to promote women’s employment and entrepreneurship.
General objective: 1. To promote women’s socio-economic empowerment through women’s tech-based entrepreneurship and participation in the formal employment sector, notably in ICT-related employment, initially in Tanzania, DRC and Kenya, and subsequently in other Sub-Saharan African countries;
Specific objectives: i) to enable underprivileged young women in Tanzania to benefit from high quality IT and entrepreneurship skills training that will boost their employability; ii) to implement a pan-African digital incubator to facilitate women (social) entrepreneurs’ access to crucial resources to launch and grow their tech-based start- ups: mentorship, access to potential partners, funders, including crowdfunding services, and capacity-building support, and access to potential customers; iii) to pilot an innovative, comprehensive women’s IT training and tech entrepreneurship incubation model that can be replicated and scaled up elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa; iv) through the digital incubator, to spotlight and showcase women tech entrepreneurs, creators, role models and leaders, and to facilitate cross-border and cross-sector collaboration.
Outcome 1: Women’s increased socio-economic empowerment through formal employment, notably ICT-related employment
Outcome 2: Women’s increased socio-economic empowerment through tech-based entrepreneurship
- Women & Girls
- Rural
- Urban
- Poor
- Low-Income
- 4. Quality Education
- 5. Gender Equality
- 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
- 9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
- Tanzania
- Uganda
people currently served = 800 people
In one year = 1600 people
In five years =15000 people
Our overarching goal is to invest in young women as potential tech entrepreneurs, tech creators, tech role models, and leaders, in Tanzania and across Sub-Saharan Africa
In order to achieve this goal, Apps and Girls is implementing an innovative cyclical process of advanced coding and entrepreneurship training, mentorship, and incubation. The process itself harnesses the power of digital technologies, notably through providing advanced IT training, an offline and online women’s tech entrepreneurship incubator and e-mentoring to match emerging tech entrepreneurs with mentors. Through their work, they seek to break various barriers that hinder girls & young women in ICT such as a non-existent support system, lack of role models and prevailing gender stereotypes by providing the alternative, a supportive path into the field of ICT and a future in tech.
Over the years Apps and Girls have been working to bridge the tech Gender gap in Tanzania mainly focusing in Dar es Salaam and a few regions in Tanzania. Apps and Girls’ interventions in the entire community is to impact more than 1500 girls within the next year and led to the birth of tech entrepreneurs, tech creators, tech role models, and leaders driving change across Tanzania. We would like to scale our interventions to more regions and countries to impact more than 15000 girls within the next 5 years.
One of the main challenges that we have been dealing with is not having enough funds for resources to support the program. Usually we have a large pool of young women who apply to our program and can only accommodate a few due to lack of resources. Furthermore, providing technical and entrepreneurship support needs legal approval from the education ministry and acquiring the legal documentation takes a longer period of time. Thus sometimes impacts the time frame of certain activities in the program.
Addressing the legal issues, we have managed to acquire most legal documents and are still in conversation regarding the remaining ones. This has helped us to acquire students from different regions.
Getting a fund from SOLVE will help us acquire necessary resources such as computers, desktops, teaching materials, etc which will allow us to accomodate more young women and expand our program to Zanzibar. This will allow us to reach more young women who are at a higher risk of being unemployed.
- Nonprofit
N/A
Our organization consists of nine(9) people which include the full-time staff, part time, volunteers and other workers that help to provide solutions.
Fulltime: 5
Part time: 3
Volunteer: 1
The team is full of passionate, young and driven individuals with a background in IT and Computer Science who loves working with different girls and helping them to unleash their full potential and become changemakers in their societies.
We are currently working with two partners in this solution
The Southern Africa Innovation Support (SAIS) a regional initiative that
supports the growth of new businesses through strengthening innovation ecosystems and promotion of cross-border collaboration between innovation role-players in Southern Africa.Therefore SAIS supports our organization by providing Funds that will help students to get sufficient skills and enough resources that ensures the implementation of the program.
Women’s WorldWide Web (W4) an online crowdfunding platform aiming to promote girls’ and women’s empowerment worldwide, in cities and in rural areas, in both developing and developed countries.The W4 have been working closely with our organization and partnering by exchanging ideas and solve different problems together so as to help the young girls to attain more skills and become everything they have ever wanted.
- Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)
The longer-term goal of the project is to transition to a social enterprise model and secure revenue streams to strengthen the project’s financial sustainability.
Our initial objective, is to generate robust, aggregated results over an 18-month to 2-year period to demonstrate the far-reaching impact and return on investment of this innovative model (in terms of, but not limited to) i) promoting women’s employment in the formal (ICT-related) employment sector and ii) promoting women’s tech-based entrepreneurship).
Apps & Girls is currently working on a multi-year social business model, in partnership with W4, to generate revenue streams in the longer-term. Our longer- term objective, as we grow the program, is to offer a diverse portfolio of paid services, such as loan-based financing of our training, paid “IT training and digital upskilling packages”, paid professional coaching & mentorship services, offline IT & entrepreneurship training hub and online hub subscription packages etc.
We need funding resources to be able to recruit more girls to the platform.We need financial resources to enable us to recruit more girls into the program, the program will assist with resources such as computers, softwares and the space.
- Funding and revenue model
- Talent recruitment
Talent recruitment -We wish to partner with MIT faculty to equip our staff with knowledge and skills about nee technologies such as IoT, Machine learning, Artificial intelligence and more.
Funding - We need financial resources to enable us to recruit more girls into the program, the program will assist with resources such as computers, softwares and the space.
We wish to partner with MIT faculty to equip our staff with knowledge and skills about nee technologies such as IoT, Machine learning, Artificial intelligence and more.