“Huawei is excited to celebrate Women’s Month by offering this rewarding opportunity for women to use newly gained tech skills as a springboard for their participation in the digital economy,” said Vanashree Govender, Huawei South Africa’s senior Media and Communications Manager. Speaking to a crowd of business and government leaders, as well as media professionals, Govender kicked off Huawei’s first in person Women in Tech Digital Skills Training Programme for 2024.
Women in tech “will not only bridge the gap in the digital landscape but promote gender equity and give women a competitive edge in their industries and the broader job market,” said Govender.
This year, the annual programme offers a cohort of 30 women entrepreneurs and government leaders an exclusive training experience in the rapidly developing fields of cloud computing, 5G and artificial intelligence (AI).
Kemogotsitse Bosielo Public Relations Manager at Huawei South Africa said, “we have been running this training for the last three years with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) and we also look forward to establishing a long-lasting relationship with the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources.”
Elizabeth Marabwa, Chief Director of Programmes and Projects at the Department of Minerals and Petroleum Resources encouraged the women who signed up to make the most of the training opportunities that lie ahead.
“Our department has taken decisive steps to ensure that we have strategies in place to guide the empowerment of women in both the mining and energy sectors,” she said.
She thanked Huawei for creating a transformative training initiative that will capacitate women in her department with tech and leadership skills that will ready them for the competitive digital age.
The two-day training promises to help women take their careers to new heights as Henley Business School Africa joins as a new partner who will deliver fresh lessons in leadership development.
“More than half the population are women, and the rest are men, but that’s not represented in our jobs and salaries,” said Jon Foster-Pedley, Dean of Henley Business School Africa. His speech spoke to the challenges women professionals face in industries like tech.
“Women represent just 35% of the workforce in large tech companies. But when you look at what Huawei is doing with this programme, they enable women in this room to be activists for change in South Africa, so we get more women representation.”
Research shows that when women entrepreneurs are trained in cloud computing for example, they can better analyse data as well as market trends and draw data-led insights to better serve their customers. It is also argued that tech skills training makes women more open to embracing innovation in their business, giving them a competitive advantage in their industries.
Women attending the event reflected on the skills they hope to gain from the training. Masetshaba Rampolokeng’s company SRM Africa offers data analysis, robotics processing and other digital solutions to corporate clients.
She joined the Huawei Women in Tech training programme to “get skills that will allow me to better position myself when I am in a boardroom pitching for big clients against big competition.”
Marabwa concluded with words of inspiration for the women who are about to embark on an intensive upskilling journey: “before you are a leader, success is about growing yourself. When you are a leader, success becomes about growing others.”
