Women in the tech sector have called on female students to embrace technical courses to bridge the present gender gap in the field.

This is part of an ongoing national campaign organised by HerinTech, a non-profit organisation founded in 2020, to encourage female students to take on and enjoy technical courses, following the celebrations of International Women’s Day.

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Olive Tuyishime, a lecturer at University of Rwanda (UR), researcher, and PhD holder in Soil Sciences with Specialisation in Agricultural Water Management, is one of the women in the sector encouraging female students to associate with tech agricultural-related courses in order to scale up the low number of females in higher institutions, and field at large.

Reaching food security, she said, requires more technical experts so that Rwandans shift from traditional to modern agriculture practices.

"Agriculture is also a science. We need to catch up with men in the tech sector,” she said.

"We encourage them to pursue higher education as we have few girls continuing at higher levels. I obtained my PhD, but not all girls who make it face discouragement from their families or culture. Girls are needed in agriculture courses, as our agricultural practices are primarily traditional. We require apps that support farmers.”

Tuyishime also said that there are still areas with a very limited number of female students, such as agriculture mechanisation, and soil and water engineering.

"For those subjects, you find that girls are fewer compared to boys. They feel like those courses are for boys,” she added.

Alice Mungwaneza, a third-year student and the founder of Spring Initiative, and Joanna Michelle Umutoni, who’s designing the agriculture-related project to help farmers increase yield, are some of the promising students at Rwanda Coding Academy (RCA).

Spring Initiative is a programme that helps neighbouring students in Mukamira Sector, Nyabihu District, and the initiative is currently aiding 18 students in computer courses over weekends, before joining an advanced level, with a target to reach at least 200 by 2024.

Umutoni is creating an app to assist farmers in boosting their production through a mobile and web platform to enhance food security. She drew inspiration from her aunt who founded a tech firm in Singapore.

"That’s why I also want to build my own company where I will be able to help others who did not get a chance to go to school or learn about tech,” she said

Speaking to The New Times regarding what makes female students find tech-related courses difficult, Pacifique Linda Ikirezi, founder of HerinTech, said she went through similar circumstances, which is why she chose to find a way to solve the problem.

Through her HerinTech, she prepares camps for coding and other technological-related courses "to close that gender gap.”

"We’re running this campaign for a month to raise awareness on current challenges where most female students do not advance into universities and also as part of Women’s Day Celebration,” she said during the International Women’s Day celebration at Rwanda Coding Academy in Nyabihu District.

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According to Paul Umukunzi, Director General of Rwanda TVET Board, regular awareness campaigns are conducted targeting female students as well as scholarship schemes targeting 4,000 TVET students whereby at least 50 percent of them have to be female students.

"Even though the gap is not so big, we continue to encourage female students to join technical training. Technical education is the future of the world; we cannot afford to leave our sisters behind in this technological transformation. They have big potential,” he told The New Times.

Official figures by RTB show that there are 56,722 female and 64,540 male students in TVET schools across the country.