Kenyan girls' team qualify for 2018 global technovation challenge

Ten Kenyan girls’ team are among those shortlisted for the 2018 Global Technovation Challenge semi-finals.

The ten teams comprise of more than 400 girls and are drawn from different secondary schools countrywide.

To date, two Kenyan teams have recorded top submissions globally. In 2016, Precious Blood Girls emerged 2^nd with a bus booking app and in 2017, Kisumu Girls made it to the finals with an app that seeks to combat genital mutilation.

This is good news for the local tech scene seeing that more women and girls are actively contributing to its growth. Just recently, four Kajire Girls High School students invented a solar-powered sensor kit to alert the authorities of straying elephants.

This is definitely great news for the fight for inequality in the tech scene.

The technovation challenge encourages young women to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

The qualifying teams and their innovations

Some of the teams and apps shortlisted for the semi-finals are:

Queen Focus from Tumaini Girls Mombasa – Soba, an app designed to link drug addicts to rehab centers.
High Gram from Qubaa High School, Mombasa – “M.O.B”, an education app that aims to reduce illiteracy levels in society.
Teams Pentatechs and G-SAS from Kaveye Girls, Kisumu – “Kuza Talent”, an app that links organizations with talented youths and “E-housing” – an app for finding houses to rent respectively.
Skylarks from Ngiya Girls, Siaya – “Kuwa Safe”, a sexual education app
NaitechChix and Technovergent from M-PESA Foundation Academy – Abicare, a safety and care App for people with albinism, and Smartfarmer, a commercial digital platform for small-scale farmers.
Smartgirls from Njoro Precious Secondary School, Nakuru – “I-Mentor”, matches every student in partner high schools with a college-educated mentor.
Movers and Shakers from Mary Hill Girls, Nairobi – Soko Fresh, an e-commerce store for groceries.

The challenge involves three months of mentorship where teams of young women work together to design Apps and pitch them to investors.

This year, the participating teams were mentored by Safaricom’s Women in Technology Initiative (WIT), an initiative that seeks to increase the participation of women in Kenya’s technology sector.

The collaborative efforts have paid off as they have pushed Kenya to position 4 in global submissions.

The shortlisted teams will qualify for the global finals where the winning team will be awarded KSh. 1.5million in funding for further app development.

The top two teams from Africa will receive Sh1,011,600 ($10,000) and Sh505,800 (5,000) in scholarships.

At this point, August 6 – 10, 2018 are key dates for the 2018 challenge since the girls will pitch their innovations on a world platform.

About global technovation challenge

Technovation offers girls an opportunity to learn the skills they need to become tech entrepreneurs and leaders. Every year, this initiative invites girls to identify a problem in their community, and then challenge them to solve it.

Girls work in teams to build both a mobile app and a business plan to launch that app. They work closely with mentors.

Technovation’s curriculum takes students through 4 stages of launching a mobile app startup. These are:

Ideation – This is the first phase that requires the girls to identify a problem in the community.
Technology – The second phase which requires the girls to develop a technology solution to solve the identified problem.
Entrepreneurship – At this stage, the students are expected to create a business plan to launch the app.
Pitch – The final stage where students introduce the product to the market.

Technovation is proudly sponsored by giant global tech companies including Adobe Foundation, Google.org, 3M, Oracle, and Salesforce.org.

The organization has partnered with UN Women, UN, and MIT Media Lab.

Eligibility

To be eligible to participate in Technovation as a student, you must be between the ages of 10 to 18 and identify as female.

To be fully registered, you must form or join a team. Teams can range in size from 1-5 girls. No more than 5 girls are allowed to join a team. You can only join one team.

A team’s division – Junior or Senior – depends on the age of all team members.

Junior Division: Team members are between 10-14 years old.

Senior Division: Team members are between 15-18 years old.

Here at Mum Loves Tech, we wish the girls all the best.