Africa-wide digital payment and commerce Solutions Company, Interswitch Group, joined to celebrate and encourage young girls in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector, as the world marks the International Girls in ICT Day, 2020,
The theme of this year’s celebration was: “Girls in ICT: Inspiring the Next Generation”, and this saw two tech women at Interswitch, Eddidiong Asikpo and Ifeanyichukwu Onwurah, taking to Instagram Live to share their landmark achievements in tech as they celebrate girls and young women who have been working relentlessly to redesign the ICT landscape in Nigeria; while also sharing their personal journeys so far in the ICT sector.
They talked about their career trajectories, from young girls in science to now full-blown women in ICT. They encouraged girls in STEM, related to their current struggles and painted a beautiful picture of the future in the tech sector.
The anchor of the live session, Edidiong Asikpo, a Software Engineer at Interswitch, opened the session by reminding the public that ICT Day was created to encourage girls to consider careers in ICT. She proceeded to reveal she transitioned from Medicine to Tech.
“I never wanted to become anything technical. I applied to study Medicine and Surgery at the university. When that did not work out, I started at Innovation Hub at Akwa Ibom to learn Application Development. Tech started to become cool because I thought I would start doing what the big boys at Facebook do. Indeed, tech has afforded me access to greater opportunities and contributes to making life better”.
She went further to add that for the next generation to be copped into tech, they would need to be intentional about it, by searching for opportunities and being open to mentorship.
Ifeanyichukwu Onwurah, Senior IT Service Management Analyst at Interswitch, talked about her journey into tech as a rough one and described it as “Failing forward”.
“At some point in the university, I lost enthusiasm. I failed a lot, struggled through school and didn’t quite understand my purpose. All I wanted to do was look pretty in a pretty job”, Ifeanyichukwu mentioned.
“After training school, I was deployed to the Tech Department where I struggled in my mind again, for nine months. However, Tech has turned out to be the best decision that I ever made. I was inspired by my Group Head, who answered all my questions and helped me through a mind switch. So, I made up my mind not to be defined by my school grades and this drove me to be better at my work. Seven years later, I’m no longer where I used to be and it has been an exciting journey so far.”
International Girls in ICT Day is an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) initiative and global movement, to encourage girls and young women to consider studies and careers in ICT. It is annually celebrated on the Fourth Thursday of April.
Tech is continuous, and the world is progressing from gender bias in the tech space to gender inclusion. Interswitch has made it a point of duty to bring in more women into the tech space through their InterswitchSPAK and STEMLIKEAGIRL Initiatives.
The InterswitchSPAK Annual Science Competition is one of the ways through which Interswitch creates an equal opportunity environment for more girls to chart a career path in ICT. Since the start of the competition in 2018, there has been an impressive increase in the participation of girls.
