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DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN TECH COMMUNITIES: improving the participation of Rivers South-East Youths.
Innovation has always been about generating ideas despite the challenges faced by individuals status quo, passion and commitment are the one thing that could always drive you through challenging times. For the success of building a good and sustainable tech ecosystem, diversity and inclusion are fundamental. Promoting diversity and inclusion in our workspace and communities is a good approach to economic growth and social values.
“Diversity gives you access to a greater range of talent, not just the talent that belongs to a particular world-view or ethnicity or some other restricting definition. It helps provide insight into the needs and motivations of all of your client or customer base,” — Mier Shemla
THE NIGERIA TECH ECOSYSTEM AND ITS ACHIEVEMENT
Africa has been the recent destination for tech giants, despite the pandemic we still believe in the development of Africa and its people, you would believe with me that the pandemic has been a wheel on which digital transformation has actually experience spike inactivity. With the increase in technology services, demand for more technical experienced individuals and training sessions is of the essence, and more virtual meetings and training is been conducted. Looking at the growth in the Nigerian tech ecosystem, it is evidence, start-ups/ developers from this part of the world are attracting investors and partnerships from VCs around the globe.
The Nigerian tech ecosystem has been on a progressive move, it is a leading hub in the Africa tech space with giants like; Jumia, Andela, Flutterwave, Paystack, Kuda, and Interswitch. HeliumHealth; one of the Google accelerators that have successfully raised funds during the pandemic era. Not forgetting emerging start-ups that are shaping our current roadmap to innovation with wonderful ideas like; Eden and Timiun.
TECH COMMUNITY AND EVENTS
Events like; Open-source festival, ForLoop Port Harcourt, DevFest, Concatenate, The Edge conference, and The Next conference have left behind a powerful experience that has created another level of enthusiasm among developers. Picture, videos, and material that were made available during and after the events were another means of bringing back memories just as drinks bring back memories.
The Port Harcourt ecosystem is an amazing place for developers to grow and network, with wonderful contributors like Precious Chukundah, Philip Obiorah, Gino Osahon, Lucas Bruce, Ugo Matt, Gloria Ojukwu, and Theodora Isola. the effort made by these groups of contributors has given the Port Harcourt ecosystem a voice among the tech hub cities in Nigeria.
RIVERS SOUTH-EAST
A brief explanation; Rivers South-East is one of the three senatorial districts in Rivers State, Nigeria. It covers a total number of six Local Government areas and In 2014, it had a projected population of 1,720,790.
With the growing number in population, you will wonder about the rate of computer literacy as well as proper internet usage among residences. With reports from the Bureau, as of the end of June 2019, Nigeria had a total of 122.6 million internet subscribers.
Below is a chart showing states with the highest subscribers
HOW TO IMPROVE PARTICIPATION OF YOUNG PERSONS
With the above information, increasing the number of participated youth in tech activities will also increase the data set of Rivers State among the top States with internet subscribers, the success of building a good and sustainable tech ecosystem with diversity and inclusion can be improved upon by teaching the necessary digital skill, making the resource available, and creating an environment that supports creativity and work.
ROADMAP
This is a program that presents users; mostly underrepresented groups with a platform to learn, connect, and contribute to the building of Open Source Softwares. The features of the Roadmap include the following:
- Developers meetup
- Developers Hangout
- FOSS Projects
One thing is to encourage young people to come into the tech community but is another to engage and retain them. If you recall one of the features of Roadmap is to provide learning resources via meetups, mentorship classes, organize the hangout section and build a resourceful project together as a team.
The impact of this platform could be measure by the effect it would have on the society with the increase in social value among residence and drop-in youth restiveness, economical value base on projects/ startup accelerator program, youth restiveness will reduce and many other positive benefits that could be seen as the measurement of the impact caused by Roadmap.
This idea if supported will increase the participation of young people in the tech community with collaboration with tech hubs. for more information about “Roadmap”, the comment section is a good start to a productive conversation, or hit me up, Dule Martins.
Thanks for reading!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
