In the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), women are widely underrepresented in both further education and professional roles. This issue is even more pronounced in developing nations, where an increase in female representation, within these areas, could help break cycles of poverty, and offer the next generation role models that help foster long-term change.

However, there are projects that are already addressing this, and in several African countries high-school girls are learning coding skills that could help change both their futures and those of women across developing nations.

Coding for a new tomorrow

In a world in which social media and smartphone apps are ubiquitous aspects of the developed world, coding has become a huge area of employment and invention. In the developing world, cellphone technology is widespread, and the proliferation of smartphone technology is spreading.

However, for girls and women in countries like Kenya, long standing ideas around gender combine with widespread poverty to make the internet age inaccessible for many of them. In the slums of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, only 20% of women have internet access, compared with 57% of men.

This situation not only holds back women, but the country at large, as STEM employment opportunities spread best when there is a large base of potential talent. The current imbalance may well begin to change, as several organizations are now helping to provide tech education to girls in Kenya, Uganda and Senegal.

The charity, Theirworld, is running “Code clubs” across these three nations, in which schoolgirls can learn a variety of skills within STEM fields, something that can help alter ideas about education, while providing the girls in question with new skillsets.

Theirworld launched the first code club in conjunction with Kano Code Academy and Africa Gathering, and they had funding from Facebook. Theirworld President, Sarah Brown, explained, “With a safe space to learn and play, a mentor to inspire, and access to technology…we can increase learning opportunities, and empower girls to fulfill their potential.”

Before International Women’s Day, Theirworld launched a social media campaign with the title #RewritingTheCode, which aimed to raise awareness about the problems facing girls around the world within STEM fields and education at large.

Even more promisingly, this is not the only organization that has looked to provide females with educational support within Africa, and there are already success stories that show how beneficial such provisions could become.

From Kenya to beyond

In Kenya, one group of schoolgirls took advantage of another program supporting girls in STEM fields, and found themselves as finalists in a global competition for schoolgirls in technology. Kenyan cellphone company, Safaricom, operates a scheme that provides technology education to girls, along with access to mentors who help them build upon their new skills.

Harriet Karanja is only 16 years old, but with support from Safaricom’s scheme, she created an app with friends called M-Safiri, which means “traveler” in Swahili. The app allows users to buy bus tickets remotely, and then get GPS guidance to the bus-stop of your choice, without having to wait on the street.

Karanja and her friends made the finals of a global competition, held in San-Francisco, a huge achievement for them, but also a glowing endorsement of the project.

While it is admirable that charities such as Theirworld are helping females access the STEM world in Africa, it is even more encouraging that domestic tech giants like Safaricom are recognizing the need for change, and the wealth of talent that they can help foster. The American company, Intel, has also funded mentor schemes in Kenya, and Kenya’s already blossoming tech scene looks set to finally make use of all of its young talents, rather than losing 50% of its potential due to gender discrimination.

If Kenya can lead the way, then the projects in Uganda and Senegal can surely follow in their success, and bodies like Theirworld already plan on expanding into another 3 African nations by the end of the year. Marieme Jamme, Co-Founder of Africa Gathering, said “Africa is crying out for young women with STEM skills and knowledge.” Hopefully the changes occurring will ensure that what Africa is crying out for, will soon be something that Africa gets.

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As customers shift to electronic banking, South Africa’s four largest banks spent a total of more than $2 billion on information technology and personnel to run it during the year ending in June. At the same time, two of the four banks, Barclays Africa’s Absa bank and Standard Bank, have closed dozens of branch offices, a further reflection of the growing preference for virtual banking, especially among young consumers. The $2.1 billion IT spend represented about 15 percent of the banks’ total operating costs for the same period, according to Hilton Tarrant, an analyst based in Johannesburg with the tech firm immedia. In addition to Barclays Africa’s Absa and Standard Bank, Tarrant’s analysis includes First National Bank and Nedbank. Tarrant also said IT spending is increasing, led by Standard and Barclays. For example, Standard Bank’s IT spending, including salaries, totaled $900 million in 2015, up 11 percent from the year before. Barclays Africa spent $480 million, a seven percent increase over the prior year.

Trend expected to continue

“The trend is only going to accelerate as transactions continue to be offloaded to Internet and mobile banking,” Tarrant said, noting that native mobile banking apps with better security would also drive the appeal of electronic banking. In total, the four banks have reduced the number of branches in South Africa from 3,005 in 2011 to 2,862 at the end of 2015, a reduction of 143 branch offices or five percent, according to Tarrant. Barclay’s Absa closed more than 100 branches in the last five years, and Standard Bank over 50. First National Bank has about the same number of branches as it had in 2011 and Nedbank has added 13 branch offices. In 2015, Barclay’s Absa had the largest footprint of the four with 784 branches. First National Bank had 723, Nedbank 708 and Standard Bank 647.

Branch offices incur high costs

While there have been complaints about bank branch closings, Tarrant said that is a good idea, given high costs to operate them and reduced consumer interest in banking in person, especially among mobile-focused young people. “Traditional banks’ branches have high costs, which is one of the reasons why the companies have pushed hard to shift transactions to electronic channels,” Tarrant said. South Africa is part of a global and continental trend toward electronic banking. In 2014, mobile money transactions generated more than $650 million in revenue in sub-Saharan Africa and the amount is expected to double to $1.3 billion by 2019, according to research by Frost and Sullivan ICT. According to the World Bank, fewer than 25 percent of the 1.4 billion  population of the continent have a bank account while 40 percent have a mobile phone.

Banks dominate mobile market in South Africa

On the continent, South Africa is unusual. With 75 percent of the adult population using banking services, the country’s banks have established themselves the major players in online and mobile transactions. In many other sub-Saharan African countries, where a much smaller share of the population uses any banking services, mobile service providers dominate the marketplace. Earlier this year, a top East African bank announced plans to challenge a major telecommunications operator to gain a larger share of Kenya’s electronic banking market. Banks in Cameroon, Mali and Nigeria also are trying to tap into the growing market of electronic payments.

In contrast, efforts by telecommunications companies to crack the South African electronic money market have foundered. The African telecom giant MTN in September announced it would halt its mobile money service, saying it was not commercially viable. It was the second telecom to drop service in South Africa this year. In May, Vodacom, a Vodafone subsidiary and the nation’s largest mobile network, announced it was throwing in the towel after its M-Pesa service – popular in other countries including Kenya – failed to catch on. The company had hoped to sign up 10 million South African users when it launched M-Pesa in 2010. However, by 2015, only one million people had signed up and only 76,000 were active on the platform.

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A new player has arrived in Nigeria’s banking sector. SunTrust Bank officially opened for business last month, becoming the first new institution to be granted licensing by the Central Bank of Nigeria since 2001. SunTrust has been making headlines due to its innovative, tech-driven business model that stands in stark contrast to Nigeria’s traditional financial entities. The bank could prove to be a disruptive force within the country’s banking space.

A technology based bank is born

Muhammad Jibrin, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer, has been one of the driving forces behind the bank’s emergence. Jibrin founded SunTrust in 2009, at the time the firm was focused solely on mortgage lending. After enjoying years of steady success, the board decided to pursue a commercial banking license, a notoriously difficult proposition given Nigeria’s stringent financial controls. SunTrust finally obtained the coveted license in late in 2015, becoming the first new bank to do so since the beginning of the 2000s. Jibrin and the SunTrust team have a vision of providing a modern, technology driven service that will change the way banking works within Nigeria. He said “Banking is no longer where you go, it is what people do. Therefore, the only thing that can stand the future is no longer physical branches, but banking services that would be driven by technology.”

New ways of banking can help millions

Nigeria remains woefully underserviced by the traditional banks in the nation. An estimated 40 Million adult Nigerians are currently “unbanked”. SunTrust is looking to bring quality banking services to this demographic. In order to achieve this SunTrust has laid out a daring strategy and ambitious goals. The bank only runs a handful of branches as it is restricted in where it can physically operate by its regional license. However, this suits their strategy just fine. SunTrust intends to attract customers the length and breadth of the country by focusing on purely electronic banking services. Jibrin said: “We will be everywhere because we are not limited by barriers or by physical location; technology is not limited physically and therefore whether you are in the South-East or in the North, we can easily service you.” Less branches on the ground means less overheads; SunTrust says that it will be able to offer the same services, more cheaply and effectively than the traditionally encumbered financial institutions.

SunTrust focused on the future of finance

Jibrin recently made an excellent point about the future of banking in Nigeria. He pointed out that 70% of Nigeria’s population could currently be classified as “young” and that this demographic is growing rapidly. The country has approximately 170 million citizens, yet this number will be as high as 220 million by 2025, making Nigeria one of the youngest countries on the planet. It is this growing, young and tech savvy population who largely don’t have access to, or can’t afford traditional banking services. SunTrust intends to be the bank for the new Nigerian generation. SunTrust has received praise for its courageous decision to launch in the midst of a recession, an unprecedented event for a financial institution. Charles Onyema Ugboko, SunTrust’s Chairman, said that going into business at this time proved that “the board and management are committed to the growth of the Nigerian economy.” Similarly, SunTrust has been lauded for its intent to focus on small and medium scale enterprises. These companies have long struggled to obtain credit from traditional banks, yet SunTrust intends to break the mold by placing them in clusters and cooperatives which will help to mitigate risk. The bank’s board is dedicated to this strategy as they feel that these underserviced businesses hold immense potential to drive growth In Nigeria.

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Long dependent on coal, South Africa has become the leader on the continent in developing renewable energy sources thanks in part to a competitive bidding process that helps keep costs low. South Africa had accepted a total of 92 projects providing an estimated 6,300 megawatts as of April. The projects represent more than $13 billion in private investment.

The Cookhouse wind farm on the country’s eastern cape is the largest installation, producing 138 megawatts of electricity since it started feeding the power grid in 2014. But wind, solar and biomass projects are popping up all over the countryside. Still, South Africa remains highly dependent on fossil fuels. It is the 11 th largest emitter of carbon output from energy use in the world. But it is making progress with renewables. Tina Joemat-Pettersson, South Africa’s minister of energy said the country had added a total of about 4,300 megawatts of renewable energy capacity between 2011 and 2015 alone.

Low cost drives development

One driver is cost. By last year, the price of wind energy from new projects had dropped to five cents per kilowatt-hour, about half the cost of coal. “Not only is technology producing much cleaner power, it is doing so at a lower cost than traditional fossil fuel technologies,” Evan Rice, chief executive of Greencape, a government funded not-for- profit development agency in Cape Town, said.

In partnership with the city of Cape Town, the national government, and Germany, Greencape is launching the South African Renewable Energy Technology Center, which will train 250 technicians annually to operate renewable energy systems around the country.

Bidding process plays a role

Anton Eberhard, a professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town, said South Africa’s competitive bidding process has helped keep costs low while assuring efficient development. Rather than negotiating with a vendor directly on a case-by- case basis, the bidding process uses competitive tenders and may give awards to multiple bidders,

Eberhard said. He said the transparent process leaves less room for corruption, which has hampered development efforts in other countries. The process also offers financial advantages, Eberhard said, noting that prices bids had dropped by 48 percent for wind and 71 percent for solar energy over the course of four rounds of bids during the past several years.

He said advances in battery technology will reduce the problem of interuptions in wind and solar power when there is no wind or sun. This will drive more development of these resources and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Energy installations produce jobs

The developments are also benefitting local communities. For example, a factory that will produce wind towers in the economically depressed township of Atlantis outside Cape Town is expected to employ 200 people to build 150 towers a year. Rice expects employment to grow as production ramps up. Also, 15 percent of the sale of energy itself goes into a community trust that enables local trustees to funnel money into education, health care and economic development locally.

Renewable energy developments will “transform rural communities in terms of health care, education, job creation and a raft of other interventions,” said Johan van den Berg, director of the South African Wind Energy Association.

Nation still banks on fossil fuels

Despite the promise of renewables, South Africa is not turning away from fossil fuels entirely. The government plans to open up 20 percent of the country to shale fracking and President Jacob Zuma has approved a deal to buy eight nuclear power plants from Russia at a cost of $84 billion.

The country is also building Medupi, the largest dry cooled coal-fired power station in the world. Construction began in 2007 but has been mired in cost overruns and delays for years. Once completed, it is expected to produce more than 4,000 megawatts, about the same amount that South Africa developed with renewable projects in just four years. Still, Berg and others see a bright future for renewables in South Africa and beyond.

The continent, he said, has “the opportunity to leapfrog the old centralized large scale fossil fuel power and big grid paradigm. With technology and project prices continuing to drop, and rapid breakthroughs in battery and other storage technologies, I have no doubt that renewables will address all of our power needs in time.”

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Pushing its nascent digital economy to catch up with its booming commerce, Ivory Coast is investing $165 million to lay more than 3,000 miles of additional fiber optic cable. The West African nation has already installed nearly 400 miles of fiber optic cables and planned to add another nearly 900 miles this year, according to Andre Augustine Apete, Minister of information and communications technology. When the work is completed, the country will have more than 4,000 miles of cable, about one-fifth of its goal of more than 12,000 miles. As Ivory Coast emerges from a decade of political turmoil, the government has adopted an ambitious agenda of investment in infrastructure that has driven economic growth to about nine percent during the past four years, one of the highest growth rates on the continent. While commodities-reliant economies elsewhere in Africa have slowed, Ivory Coast posted growth of 8.4 percent for its gross domestic product and projects growth of 8.5 percent this year, according to the World Bank. The country has seen large increases in overall production, particularly in agriculture, as a result of regulatory reforms, public investment programs and infrastructure development.

Mobile banking, shopping boom

The world’s top cocoa producer, Ivory Coast has also experienced a boom in digital activity driven by mobile banking and shopping that total nearly $2 million profits a day, outpacing traditional banking. “I don’t think all our banks put together are doing as much”, Apete said. However, the government has more ambitious plans to grow the emerging digital economy, which today directly or indirectly employs about 150,000 people out of the country’s population of more than 20 million. Until recently, mobile access has dominated the marketplace with more than 85 percent penetration, while the internet and broadband sectors have been largely undeveloped in the Ivory Coast.

High costs limit development

High international bandwidth costs played a major role in limiting development because the unique submarine fiber optic cable served merely Ivory Coast. With the landing of a second cable in 2011 and as many as three additional cables expected to be added, prices have begun to decline. Another major development in Ivory Coast was the introduction of 3G mobile services in 2012, with the launch of the first 3.5G mobile broadband service. The wide geographic reach promised by 12,000 miles of fiber optic cable is intended to position the country to develop a booming digital economy. Fiber optic cable is much less expensive than copper wire, and, importantly for digital communications and data, it has a higher carrying capacity and provide fastest broadband connexion.

Ivory Coast aims to become a regional tech hub

Innocent N’Dry, head of new technologies, innovation and services development at Ubifrance in Abidjan, said the Ivorian government wants the country to become a regional hub for communications and information technology. The sector has seen sustained growth in the past decade, and it was one of only a few countries in West Africa that obtained 3G coverage by 2012. However, the lack of a fiber-optic network has held the country back at a time when technological entrepreneurship is emerging. “In terms of young companies and new technologies, there is real entrepreneurial dynamism, with the creation of incubators,’’ N’Dry said. He cited development of the Orange Technocenter in Abidjan, where marketing, research and engineering teams develop new products and services for the Orang telecommunication company’s customers.

Support for startups is key

N’Dry said Ivory Coast is emulating a model from Senegal in which the government provides support for young companies. To encourage new digital businesses, the Ivory Coast government implemented a free zone dedicated to information and communication technology companies. More recently, the government in July announced a fund of more than $260 million to strengthen the infrastructure for tech innovation and to support tech companies, especially startups. The fund, created with support from the African Development Bank, will also be used to help establish networks of investors and to train entrepreneurs from Ivory Coast and other countries in the region.

Mobile improvements sought

While the Ivory Coast government seeks to develop broadband capacity, it is also moving to encourage improvements in mobile services. This year, Ivory Coast will limit the number of operating licenses for telecoms to four. Three companies, which account for 96 percent of the country’s more than 20 million mobile subscriptions, will be re-licensed. They are France’s Orange, South Africa’s MTN and Mov, which was sold the Morocco Telecom by the United Arab Emirates’ Etisalat in 2014. At the same time, the government said it was withdrawing the licenses of several smaller mobile operators, stating that they had not paid for due taxes and fees. Apete said smaller companies might have the opportunity to merge into one single company controlled if a new majority shareholder emerges. “We are leaving this fourth place free in case a significant operator comes in tomorrow and says it’s interested. Those companies can then join with it”, Apete said.

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