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DotConnectAfrica Celebrates
The International Women's Day 2017 
#BeBoldForChange 
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March 8, 2017 |TAKE ACTION : BeBOLDForChange 



     
Women are the engine that powers the society, think about any phenomenal revolutionary idea that has changed the world and you will find a woman right in there." 
- Sophia Bekele, Founder of Miss.Africa   
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Carved towards promoting the involvement of the women in global development, the 2017 women's day, #Be BoldForChange couldn't speak any louder. Over the years the essence of women's day celebration has evolved and has taken up an all together novel form.  
 
Technology is developing and Roles are changing.   Gone are the dark ages of women prejudices. For this cause, a strong woman is the one who can dare to raise her voice for the cause she believes in, and this strength lives in a corner in every women's heart, it just needs to be searched.
 
"If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough."     
-Liberia President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Such transformation and change only takes root when it is planted from childhood growing into adulthood. If we mentor our young girls to try that which is considered difficult, then the change that today's theme is mobilizing will have its automatic effect into the generations to come.
Additionally, the technological arena still has a global deficiency of the female gender. We have to ask that which no one speaks of.
Well, the miss.Africa Program, an initiative that DCA Trust runs, addresses this issues in a move towards targeting women inclusion in achieving the ICT for Development goals in Africa. The program aims at developing and enhancing female coding skills through development of various Mobile Applications relevant to serve as problem solving channels in the African context.
 
 
The Miss.Africa Seed Fund 2016 trained 25 female coders who presented prototype mobile apps ranging from safety and crime prevention, health, education, fashion and child safety. The girls already have the muscles; The Miss.Africa Program Initiative only encourages them to strengthen the muscles by using them effectively.
 
 
A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman.
-Kathy Calvin, UN Foundation President and CEO
 
Our CEO, Sophia Bekele, who is listed as African Women to Watch, was on the EurAfrican Forum panel last year to discuss IT and Innovation. In her keynote she emphasized that;
   
"Africa is heavily focused on the apps economy, cloud computing & internet of things (IOT).  This is helped by the fact that women are getting to be part of this great innovation"
- Sophia Bekele, CEO DotConnectAfrica at the 
   
DotConnectAfrica celebrates the international women's day by encouraging everyone to create an enabling environment to build STEM and explore all the benefits of technology afforded to women and girls for the greater good of the world.

To #BeBOLDForChange, we are hence called to minimize the obstacles that women often face in the pursuit of realizing their dreams & financial independence to help forge a better working world- a more inclusive, gender equal world.

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Happy Women's Day from Miss.Africa and DotConnectAfrica  
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The Miss.Africa digital program is a gender-focused initiative targeted mainly at female youth audiences in Africa to increase their personal involvement in early technology use and adoption with a view to improving their digital self-awareness and empowerment, and overall self-esteem.The "Miss.Africa" digital program is envisioned as one of the central pillars of DotConnectAfrica Trust's corporate social responsibility program. It is aimed at attracting more young girls and women to the Internet platform to enable them form a sizable demographic of Internet users in Africa, thereby involving them in complementary gender development initiatives that improve the lives of young girls and women. 

The Miss.Africa program led by the DCA Academy, announced the Seed Fund in Africa that will provide small grants to support women and girls in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields to launch or expand their own initiatives that will increase their digital opportunities in IT related training, jobs and leadership roles. The program is interested in learning about successful activities that are currently supporting women and girls in STEM, and through this effort, we identify how we might support scalability and their impacts.