LIRA – In Lira city, a program for girls to develop their information and communications technology (ICT) skills has been introduced.
In collaboration with the African Girls Can Code Initiative (AGCCI), the UN-Women, the ICT ministry, the gender ministry, and the education ministry have launched the program.
The African Girl Can Code initiative, according to UN Women’s Women’s Economic Empowerment Officer Paul Okello, the African Commission, and the International Communication Union, aims to teach girls between the ages of 17 and 25 how to code so they can be competitive and show interest in ICT programs.
On Thursday, Okello stated during the AGCCI’s debut in Lira city that the program’s goal is to encourage girls to pursue a variety of courses in science, telecommunications, engineering, and mathematics.
When speaking to some of the African Girls Can Code Initiative participants, Lira Resident City Commissioner Lawrence Egole encouraged the girls to participate in the program because it is one of the government’s efforts to encourage women and girls to embrace digitalization.
The difficulty, according to Egole, is that boy children are now misusing drugs. She urged the UN Women and other partners to also pay attention to boy children.
“Young guys from schools make up the majority of the boys robbing in our neighborhoods. Boys will end up on the streets hauling logs and robbing if we groom the girl child while leaving the boys, according to Ogole.
Jasper Abura, the city’s education officer for the Lira Lango subregion, described some of the difficulties facing the schools there and noted that the area still has poor literacy rates.
He claimed that COVID-19 had considerable impact on the area, leading to a large number of student dropouts.
According to Abura, there aren’t many teachers in the area, and many qualified educators choose to move to the city instead of staying in Lira.
