To say that Judith Owigar’s work is revolutionary would be massively understating it. As one of Kenya’s foremost social entrepreneurs, Judith is working on the frontlines to ensure that there is a significant increase in the number of women and girls working and thriving in the tech ecosystem in Africa.
Judith is the co-founder and president of AkiraChix, a social enterprise radically changing the lives of women in East Africa by providing training, mentorship, and outreach programs for women in technology. She and her friends started AkiraChix in response to the challenges and outright bias they faced as women working in the tech space in Africa. They created AkiraChix as a way to provide a space where women could come together and learn from each other. Judith’s work with AkiraChix has been a significant boost for women innovators in Africa. AkiraChix’s vision to ‘nurture generations of women who use technology to develop innovations and solutions for Africa’ has contributed immensely to empowering women in Africa both technologically and financially and has enabled women serve and lead their communities.
Judith Owigar is Kenyan by birth. She attended the University of Nairobi where she graduated with a degree and a master’s degree both in Computer Science.
Judith started her career as a tech support specialist at Turnkey Africa, a Kenya based company that provides solution to insurance and banks in Africa. In April 2008, she moved to Ibid Labs where she worked as a developer. Miss Owigar has also worked with the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. In 2010, she attended iHUB’S maiden launch (iHUB is an innovation hub for the technology community in Nairobi) and noticed they were only a few ladies in attendance. This prompted her and her friends to co-found AKIRACHIX as a way to increase the ratio of women to men in technology. Programs at the organization are developed to reach young women at different levels including but not restricted to Primary Schools, High Schools and Universities; there are also programs for those working in the technology field and those who wish to have a career in technology.
In 2012, Judith founded Juakali, (which means GET IT DONE in Swahili) an online platform that creates opportunities for low income earners to have a better livelihood. The platform serves as a link between skilled manual workers from Kenya’s informal sector and jobs in construction companies. Through JuaKali, Judith is pioneering an original model to increase employment in Kenya through building the capacities of the informal economy.
Judith has received a number of recognitions and honors for her work, notable among them are the Anita Borg Change Agent award in 2012, the top 40 women under 40 award for women who have made a significant impact on Kenya, economically and socially. She is an East Africa Acumen Fellow and an International Focus Fellow. She was listed as one of 10 African voices to follow on Twitter by CNN. She was a speaker at the renowned Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2015 where she shared the stage with Former US President Barack Obama and President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya.
Judith currently serves in Africa WeTech (Women Enhancing Technology) Leadership Council and the St. George’s Primary School Alumni Association.
#TechHer loves Judith Owigar because she is passionate about technology and believes there should be no stereotype in the tech industry. Judith’s work provides an entry point for many women and girls who may want to enter the IT/Tech industry but feel discouraged because of the prevalent male dominance in the industry. We see her as a role model/ mentor to women and girls who want to identify their potential in the tech field. Also, her support for other young women in the field by creating training sessions to empower them with skills like coding, web development and technical skills truly excites us here at TechHer!
Lisa has a degree in Software Engineering from Makerere University Kampala, Uganda. She was funded by the Network Start up resource Center to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference in Minneapolis, United States of America.
She is proficient with Java, CSS, HTML and Shell scripting. She has won several awards such as: the first prize of the Orange Community Innovation Awards in 2013, by building an agricultural App called AgroMarketday with Isaac Omiat. It features details of agricultural markets, market days, and farmers in district of Uganda.
Her Work:
Why TechHer Loves Her:
At TechHer, we believe in collaboration and support. Miss Katusiime agrees with us as she reiterates the essence of women networking. She says, “It is so great when women come together to network and share brilliant ideas because through such networks great ideas are formed that lead to greater things”
Culled from the Internet
About Her:
Linda Chinwetelu is a young Nigerian currently ruling the world of technology. She started from her little corner and is expanding rapidly! She works currently as a software developer at Hotels.ng; an online travel agency founded by Mark Essien that specialises in hotel bookings within Nigeria.
She has a passion for self-development which was fueled by her parents. This has helped to set her on the path to becoming the 'geek' she is today.
Linda has a B.Sc; Second Class Upper in Computer Science and Statistics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 2014.
She is a brilliant web developer who spent most of her university holidays teaching herself using Bucky’s Beginner Web Development videos and other learning materials.
She is also proficient with using the following programming languages: JavaScript, PHP, MYSQL, MongoDB. She also likes working with these technologies: Sphinx Git, NodesJs, React JS, jQuery and Linux Servers.
Her Work:
Between August 2013 – December 2013, she worked as a web development Intern at Syscomptech; an Internet service company in Lagos State.
Some of her achievements during the Internship program include creating a classified job ads site using a classified ad Script - Osclass.
She was also responsible for building the ‘Employee Profile’ and ‘Resume Upload’ component for a job recruitment website. She helped to co-implement a redesign on the homepage of an Economics Consulting Website and also represented Syscomptech in meetings thus translating Client-User requests for Implementation.
She started working at Hotels.ng in October 2014 as a Software Developer. Her role and achievements here include managing data migration between servers, debugging of legacy codes, building new features, managing outsourced developers and writing PHP code to implement app features. She also writes Structured Query Language (SQL) queries to interact with databases and Client and Server Side JavaScript for different applications depending on specifications. She also played an active role in the refactoring of the code base and a subsequent rewrite.
Linda Chinwetelu's work has been recognized both nationally and internationally;
In February 2014, she emerged as Second runner up in the British Council Culture Shift III Hackathon competition in Nigeria. During the competition, Linda Chinwetelu and her team built an interactive digital image bank to connect the creative industry with an audience.
She also developed a web image upload bank with functionalities which includes Upload, Search, Categorize and Social shares.
In October 2015, she received the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) Scholarship Award under the auspice of the Anita Borg Institute. She was also a volunteer blogger at the GHC.
Why TechHer Loves Her:
Linda’s profile is interesting to read. This serves as an inspiration to women, especially young girls. We like her because of her love and interest in self-development.
She once said that she learnt to code because she was determined. In an interview, she talked about knowing what she wanted to do and how she went about it.
“…That was the exact moment, I knew. “I am going to learn how to do that,” I said to myself. The next holiday, I got Bucky’s Beginner Web Development videos and lot of books on web development. Then, I told my dad that I would need his monetary support to fuel the generator in order to have adequate power supply.”
Information gleaned from the Internet.
