Hackathon plugs Zimbabwe technology gender gap

by MARCUS MUSHONGA
HARARE, (CAJ News) – A historic hackathon has been held to address the under-representation of women in science, technology and engineering fields in Zimbabwe.

Organised by the IBU Hub Africa, the Young Entrepreneurial Women (YEW!) Hack, brought together for the first time in Zimbabwe, 30 female only participants aged between 14 and 24 years.

The hackathon’s objective was set for participants to address service delivery problems in Zimbabwe.

Solutions proposed ranged from the monetary queuing problems in Zimbabwe, payments for the transport sector and ICT opportunity matching for girls.

YEW Hack, which will be an annual event, is part of a larger infrastructure that’s coming up to support female developers and young entrepreneurs around Zimbabwe.

The network of people coming together to support grows and mentor young entrepreneurs and small businesses within our country.

“The word ‘hackathon’ itself is kind of daunting,” said one of the facilitators.

“For me as a developer, we all want to instil this idea that it’s not this super-secret society of people who can program. Anyone can do it. You just have to take little bites at a time.”

A hackathon, also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest, is a design sprint-like event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, project managers, and others, often including subject-matter-experts, collaborate intensively on software projects.

– CAJ News