Demystify Stem and inspire girls to pursue the subjects, careers

Research shows that there are 200 million fewer women online than men and in Uganda, women have less access to and use of ICT skills than men.
Nakanyonyi Girls’ School, Jinja, celebrated the International Girls in ICT Day- which happens every fourth Thursday of April— with 10 brand new computers and books for their school library on April 27. The celebration meant to interest more girls in the science, technology, engineering, and Maths (STEM) education and careers.

For girls and young women to thrive in STEM, they ought to acquire skills to become ICT users and creators in the digital world.
Under the theme Digital Skills for Life, American Tower Corporation Uganda (ATC) and Stanbic Bank celebrated the day at Nakanyonyi Girl’s School in Jinja to inspire and encourage girls to pursue a future in ICT.
Students from Senior One to Senior Three attended mentorship and career guidance sessions leaning towards STEM subjects. Engineers, accountants and ICT personnel from both companies temporarily offered time to the students to ask about anything concerning STEM subjects and career prospects. They also demystified myths surrounding these subjects.

Get a mentor
One of the people that came with Joanita Asio Banda, head of production services at Stanbic Bank, said her father kept pushing her towards Science subjects and believed in her. However, the start was hard due to bias. Additional Maths was treated as a boys’ subject and for A-Level students. 
Asio says the first thing her teacher told her then class of 14 was that most of them would drop out sooner or later. Within two weeks, students opted for subject they thought were simpler. She stayed and got a hang of it through relating with Senior Six students who read the same subject.

At university, Asio wanted to either become a doctor or an engineer. She, however feared rats, injections, almost everything a doctor had to deal with. Her surest way became engineering. She passed with a first class due to determination and demystifying all the myths surrounding STEM in the process.
Her two cents are, “Surround yourselves with the right people, and not a bandwagon that can easily take you far away from your destiny. Finding a mentor, someone you admire and does what you want to be to helps you pave a path to your goals. I used to go for guidance at neighbours to pave way to my destiny.”

Meanwhile, Rebecca Lwetutte, head of commercial ATC Uganda, dreamt of becoming an engineer in Senior One after people came to visit their school and one of the women, a telecom engineer at Uganda Telecom talked to them. One of the things that informed Lwetutte’s dream was the hope to travel the world through engineering, just like the woman had talked to them about. She studied Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. After so many years in the field, she said there is no mystery in the STEM subjects.
“These are subjects that once you seek to understand, you will ably pass. If your calling is in Sciences, there is nothing a girl cannot do,” she recalled.
 After her electrical engineering course, she was privileged to work with Celtel (which later became Warid and then Airtel), then MTN before joining ATC. She, however, decided to change career to make decisions in the commercial space, but still applies the engineering knowledge to make many decisions at the moment.

Why this school?
The partners chose the private girls’ school because ICT is a compulsory subject but the school of 600 students only operated on three functional computers and a few books in the library. In line with digital skills for all girls, ATC donated 10 computers, 100 STEM-themed books, 800 books recommended by the Education and Sports Ministry, 10 biographies of tech influencers and CEOs like Jeff Bezos among others and 10 books on trending tech subjects.

Jane Mary Bayiga, the head teacher, says Covid-19 left its mark as the library got damaged and most of the books there in.
On retrieving some of the functional books, Bayiga says, she keeps them in her office as they renovate the library. She believes that the book donation will restock the library and every student will be able to read at a convenient time.

“At the moment, students suffer inconveniences that when I am not around, they cannot access books. We are working on the library as fast as we can to overcome the inconvenience,” she says.

Bayiga added that the donation of computers will help the teachers and students to study with more agility. Even then, the ratio of computers to users will improve unlike in the past where the whole class had to work with three computers.

Boost skills
Dorothy Kabagambe Semanda, the CEO of ATC Uganda, said the donation would help to build a more connected world through technology. To ably to work on legitimate projects in Uganda, Kabagambe says more women on board are needed.
She cited the Jinja Nile Bridge  which was built by majority expat engineers and the Kampala Flyover s under the same expert expatriates. Kabagambe, an accountant, then asked the girls what such means to Uganda. Their chorus reply was, “Ugandan engineers are not skilled enough for such big projects.”

Kabagambe said for such not to happen in future, the girls in the room ought to offer STEM subjects, so that they can make a difference in the country.
“For you to succeed,  you require principles  such as hard work, respecting each other ( teachers, parents, peers, even those people that seemed like the lowly of society) because they help in future,” Kabagambe said.
During one of the breaks there were other activities including dance and answering questions.

Norah Namukobe, who dreams  of being a gynaecologist is one of the girls who volunteered to answer impromptu questions by Dorothy Kabagambe about programming languages, explaining who a mentor is, and others about STEM. After getting the answers right, Namukobe won Shs20, 000, one of the highest amounts to reward students who were paying attention to what had been said.
The guests also toured the school ICT room where the donated computers were launched and later, a tree planting session which was done by the donors and the head teacher to cement the celebration.