DCA unveils 2016 Round II seed fund tech initiative for women in Africa

July 22, 2016 Staff Writer News 1

Pan-African campaign, the Miss.Africa program is mobilizing a Round II Seed Fund for Tech initiatives in Africa that will avail 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 digital opportunities in IT related training, jobs and leadership roles.

The Miss.Africa program led by DCA Academy and in partnership with eMobilis, is able to train over 25 girls in mobile and technology for the year 2016.

(TOP: 2015 inaugural grand prize seed fund winner eMobilis Kenya receiving its US $5,000 dummy cheque from DCA).

“These STEM projects are important for the development and growth of internet technologies that will spur Africa to the next frontier and we are happy to be part of the progress of taking the continent to that global platform,” Sophia Bekele CEO and Founder DotConnectAfrica Group.

This is the second round of announcement for Miss.Africa Seed Fund. The winner of the first round eMobilis, is a Kenya based Mobile Technology Institute that focuses on training women & girls on Mobile Software Development and Network Infrastructure, which emerged as the grand prize winner of the inaugural Miss.Africa Seed Fund for an amount of US $5,000. Twenty five (25) women selected from over three hundred applicants will benefit directly by receiving training from eMobilis. The two other winners for the US $1,000 prize were a Madagascar-based Tech start-up MDG/Pyladies Antananarivo and Pycon Cameroon, a start up that teaches computer coding to girls and women.

The Seed Fund is a sum of US $7,000. DCA Trust received an overwhelming number of applications of over 90 applicants from more than 18 Countries in Africa across the African continent and anticipates a big turn of applications for the 2016 phase.

This Pan-African program is interested in learning about successful activities that are currently supporting women and girls in STEM and through this effort, we also identify how we might support scalability and their impacts.

The 2016 Seed Grant for the amount US $5,000 will assist the winning participant to start or expand their capacity, while two other participants will receive US $1,000 grant, based on a mix of demographics and efforts that qualify under our program.

To apply, please follow the instructions here and send an Expression of Interest (EOI) to the email address at: [email protected]

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