The International Women’s Day 2019 ended but the atmosphere covers up all the ladies in various fields that have made an impact to better their communities.
One organization that you can’t under look is Zimba Women, a project that seeks to establish a business environment that provides full support of women entrepreneurs using technology.
This is a flagship of Zimba Group Ltd, a start-up tech company providing capacity building for women in Science, Tech, engineering, and math. The enterprise also engages the participants in entrepreneurship training, mentorship, networking, and resource sharing.
The group was born from an idea by Sherifah Tumusiime with a co-founder in December 2014, with operations starting in 2015. Currently, they have a staff of 5, mentoring over 180 women and girls from different parts of the continent.
I spoke to Mary Helda Akongo, the Operations and Programs Manager at Zimba Women, about how women have become recognized in the Ugandan technology industry.
She says Zimba has impacted greatly on over 5000 individuals, through their mentorship, training, opportunities, and entrepreneurship projects, as well as their annual Business Summit.
Visible projects from Zimba Women
One of these is Eseza Mulyagonja, who attended the Zimba Tech for Business Summit in September 2016 and was inspired to put her boutique (Anathoth Clothing) online after operating for three years as a physical store. Zimba Women supported her on this.
Mary says there are a lot more examples, that include training as well.
“Last year in October, we had 30 girls graduate from a project we had in Kawempe. We were doing computer skilling to the girls, with other skills training in professions such as mechanics, welding, driving, among others.”
Training
“Besides that, we also did a eight-weeks training where 50 women graduated in partnership with Funzi, an online program,” she says.
Adding that, “We took them through training, and right now we are taking them through mentorship and studying how far the training took them and what else they need to move on from there to build their businesses further.”
Mary says that another cohort of the Funzi program will be on this year. There is also an ongoing mentorship cohort that ends this May, with over 180 women and girls participating. The training is conducted at the Innovation Village in Ntinda.
Women involvement in Uganda’s Tech industry
Mary believes technology in Uganda is under appreciated, and when you add to the fact that women are already marginalized in almost every field, it gives a hard time for the active women in the industry – including her self.
“Women are not appreciated in tech, and it is high time we stick together and help each other get to where we want to be. The society sees tech as a men’s field making it hard for us to break the barrier.”
Solution? Mary suggests that extensive mentorship for all the women interested in tech, and men involvement is the way forward.
“I think men should get involved, especially those in leadership positions or those that are working with women. If you recognize that someone (a woman) on your team is really working hard, you can offer her help, credit them, and support them.”
Zimba Women in the next 5 years
“We want to scale.”
She says the projects that Zimba has outside of Uganda are online, but they want to go beyond that and open up offices in Kenya this year first, then Tanzania and Rwanda, and probably out of East Africa as well.
“We want to launch our e-commerce website this year. We are working on the Zimba Mart. We have a prototype ready.”
Mary hopes that Zimba Mart can offer women a place to sell their products, as well as to add value to them.
