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, you need more than just passion and commitment to always drive you through challenging times. A successful tech ecosystem is sustainable through the accommodation of diversity and inclusion. 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 experienced a spike in activity.
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 are being conducted. Looking at the growth in the Nigerian tech ecosystem, it is evident, that 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 African tech space with giants like; Jumia, Andela, Flutterwave, Paystack, Kuda, and Interswitch. HeliumHealth; is one of the Google accelerators that successfully raised funds during the pandemic. 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 the 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 attendees. Pictures, 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 the population, you will wonder about the rate of digital literacy as well as proper internet usage among residents. According to 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 participating 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 Software. 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, and mentorship classes, organize the hangout section, and build a resourceful project together as a team.
The impact of this platform could be measured by the effect it would have on society with the increase in social value among residents and drop-in youth restiveness, economic value based on projects/ startup accelerator programs, youth restiveness, 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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
