Huawei has launched a tech mentorship program for Kenyan women aiming at increasing their skills to venture into digital entrepreneurship. The initiative is called Women in Technology Huawei Initiative (WITH) which was launched on Friday, September 30^th, 2019.

According to CEO of Huawei Kenya, Stone He, the program is hoped to eliminate the gender gap in digital literacy, not limited to only in Kenya but also other east African countries. Furthermore, it is part of Huawei’s CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) which aims at empowering Kenyan in technology through necessary skills in technology. With these skills, hopefully, they are able to thrive in the male-dominated field.

“We realized there is a need to give opportunities to women in the ICT field by ensuring they are mentored and trained to enable them to take up senior management positions,” said He.

He said that Huawei planned to increase the number of (local) women in its workforce to create a more supportive and conducive environment for them.

“It is our hope that one day Huawei will have a local female chief executive. We look forward to having more women at the management level and the goal can be realized if we provide them with necessary skills,” He said.

Maureen Mwaniki, the program’s Lead as well as Head of Health and Safety at Huawei said that WITH wants to increase the number of women at the firm as well as in the IT industry significantly.

“Currently, the share of women in tech at Huawei Kenya stands at 25%, but we seek to take it to 40% in the next few years,” said Mwaniki.

Source: pctechmag.com