National Womanâs Day is a public holiday in South Africa set aside to celebrate all the women in the country. Internationally the day is on 8th of March every year since 1914 and Kenya is always on the front line to celebrate with the rest of the world. The first lady is leading as an example in running projects meant to empower women and protect our children. She is also recognized as one of the leading women.
President Obama urged tech companies to uphold women. He announced a number of initiatives to bring more women and minorities into the tech sector and urged the industry to ânot leave half the team on the bench.â Kenya has many startups and other well developed tech companies founded by women and leaders should work harder to bring their innovations to light. Orange is doing a great job in supporting startups by partnering up with them.
To celebrate women, here are the two Africa’s leading women in Tech from Kenya:
Judith Owigar
Judith Owigar is the Co-founder and Operations Director of JuaKali. JuaKali is an online and mobile directory that provides opportunities by linking skilled workers from the informal sector with on demand clients. JuaKali allows workers to show their expertise on an online platform.
Forbes mentioned her as one of Kenyaâs most popular and influential female tech leaders. Owigar is also the founder of AkiraChix, an organisation that aims to inspire and develop a successful force of women in technology who will change Africaâs future. The organisation was founded back in 2010 and it aims to be the leading womenâs network impacting technology in Africa.
Owigar was named as an international Focus fellow in 2014. In 2012 and 2009 she was named as one of the Top 40 under 40 women by the Business Daily newspaper in Kenya. In 2011 Judith was awarded the Anita Borg Change Agent Award by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.
Stellah Rotich
Stellah Rotich was born and raised in Bomet. Despite the fact that she was raised in a remote area without computers, she developed a passion for it and came up with many accomplishments in that field. Rotich holds a BSc in Computer Science degree from the University of Eldoret. She is currently working at Text Book Center Limited as a Technical Support Engineer.
Rotich has over the years used technology to solve community challenges. She helped to set up an IT incubation centre in Eldoret and has helped many people in that town. She has also helped connect students of different backgrounds into one team that functions as an inclusive and supportive group.
Stellah Rotich was selected among the 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Scholarship Recipients in 2014 at Phoenix, Arizona. Besides that she is also a Young African Leader Initiative Semi Finalist in 2014 as well as a project coordinator for dLab.
Rotich is currently working on a start-up organisation to help empower girls and women in STEM through online resources, outreach programs, project based learning to make STEM fun to learn through tech aid training. She also aims to create a scientifically and technologically literate population capable of looking critically at the development of science, technology, and mathematics and women contributing to decisions about this development. Reports IT NEWS AFRICA.
