Article by Khetiwe Mathuthu
ICT was previously seen as a male dominated industry but girls are breaking barriers and closing the gender gap in Technology. On this edition we are celebrating the Zimbabwean girls from PETRA College. These five 16-year olds who call themselves “the PHOENIX SQUAD” made it to the Semi-global finals in TECHNOVATION CHALLENGE, despite the challenges they faced working from home due to COVID19.
They created an application called Job finder which makes it easy for job seekers and employers to connect from the comfort of their homes, especially now with COVID19 on the rise. When they heard that they had made it to the global semi-finals, the girls state that they were surprised. They didn’t think they would qualify what with all the challenges they faced, from electricity crisis, being new to coding and limited time to meet up and work on the application because of the lockdown.
They have high hopes for their application and are hoping to attract investors, grow their application and that soon it will be featured on different platforms. Among 29 other teams who participated in the 2020 Technovation challenge here in Zimbabwe, a team called Wamoto based in Harare also made it to the global semifinals with their application called Mr. Roots.
Youth For Innovation Trust 
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