The Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC) is a Nigerian nonprofit organisation committed to building a more inclusive technology ecosystem, with the next generation of women technology creators, entrepreneurs and leaders. Our programmes encourage more girls to pursue technology careers and support women (entrepreneurs and in civil society) to use technology confidently to increase their economic power and ability to speak about issues affecting their lives. Over the last year and a half, our work has expanded to explore how technology can improve learning outcomes and better integrate other under-represented groups, with a focus on girls with developmental disabilities and special needs, such as Autism and Down’s syndrome. We have six core programmes targeted at girls from the ages of 5 to 25, which include technology trainings, mentoring and work placement. We also provide technology training for women entrepreneurs and our programmes are implemented in partnership with local and international NGOs, educational and research organizations. W.TEC’s programmes include: Early Innovators Camp: A 2-week camp open to both girls and boys aged 5 to 9 years old, which teaches technology in a fun way and utilizes a hands-on and project-based methodology. She Creates Technology Camp: An immersive and rigorous programme for girls aged 13 to 17 years, where they learn via hands-on classes to create useful technologies for everyday living through programming, mobile application development, graphics designing, film-making and digital animation programming. They also participate in career talks and excursions to leading technology companies.

https://wtec.org.ng/

• Nigeria

• Youth
• Women

Through strategic partnerships with over 45 private and public organisations, W.TEC has scaled-up and replicated its programmes in Nigeria. The She Creates Camp, started off in 2008 as a solitary annual camp for 15 girls in Lagos – Nigeria. Since then,supported by Laureates College – Lagos and other key partners such as General Electric and Swift Networks, it has grown and been replicated to4 annual camps for close to 150 girls across 4 Nigerian states: Lagos, Kwara, Oyo and Anambra. This has been enabled by key partnerships with State Ministries of Education and public libraries, who have provided camp venues and additional support. The W.TEC Academy, the girls’ after-school technology programme, started in one school in Lagos in 2013 for 20 girls and, supported by Oracle since 2014, expanded to include 30 public secondary schools with 800 girls across Lagos and Kwara states. Other schools, groups and individuals have invited W.TEC to set-up Academies for their community of girls. This has resulted in the establishment of Academies for private and primary schools, as well as a planned expansion to two additional Nigerian states by the end of 2019. In 2017, based on feedback from the Academy set-up in primary schools as well as research that shows the importance of earlier-stage interventions for girls, W.TEC launched a version of the She Creates Camp – the Early Innovators camp – for girls and boys aged 5 to 10 years old, aimed at teaching technology in a fun way to a younger set of girls and starting them on a technology exploratory path much earlier.

Empowering girls in ICTs.

• Basic literacy • Distance learning • Education/training • E-literacy • Gender • Combating illiteracy • Life-long learning • Research and development (R&D) • Self-learning • Training ICT professionals • Volunteering • Youth