One hundred and twenty girls from six schools in the Gambia have graduated from a new course which teaches the basics of computer coding.

Between 14-25 March 2022, girls from across the six schools were divided into three groups, each spending a week learning the essential skills of either game development, web development or app development. At a ceremony on 26 March, star performers in each category were recognised and invited to demonstrate the programs they had developed.

The Empower With Code course was set up by Africell with the objective of giving an increasingly relevant skillset to a demographic often excluded from technology education and to breed a generation of young female coders who, in the long-term, can pursue careers in the tech industry and help narrow Gambia’s digital divide.

“For today’s youth, good digital skills are almost as important as reading and writing”, says Hussein Diab Ghanem, CEO of Africell The Gambia. “We are thrilled by how enthusiastically the girls have thrown themselves into the challenge of learning these new skills – and we’ve been very impressed the quality of the programs they developed. The Empower With Code course is a successful initiative and an important step towards increasing technology participation among young Gambian women”.