Stakeholders Democracy Network (SDN) has unveiled a new project geared towards arming women in the Niger Delta region with “in-demand digital skills” that can help to improve the employability and business outcomes for women and women businesses.

At a press briefing in Port Harcourt, SDN’s project manager, Ifeoma Ndukwu told newsmen that the project is targeted at women and women led businesses in Rivers and Akwa Ibom states.

“We target 1,000 women and 500 women led businesses, especially those who belong to organized women groups in Rivers and Akwa Ibom state with at least 30% from rural areas.” 

Ndukwu said beneficiaries would be within the age brackets of 18 and 40 and “would include women who have particularly high barriers to obtaining digital skills like unemployed women, women living with disabilities, widows and single mothers”.

“We also plan to target at least 30 organisations and other key stakeholders that will amongst other things provide this target group with the opportunity to access information on available job opportunities, link with prospective employers and provide business and career advice.”

She said the project was not designed to be prescriptive but tailored to train women with skills that meet their own needs.

“For this batch, digital skills that have been selected include digital marketing, content development, graphics design, data analysis and Microsoft Suite.”

Executive Director of Talklove Africa Foundation, Cynthia Obinwanne said the training will help rural women to utilize their smartphones to make money instead of only using them for social media.

SDN’s Ifeoma Ndukwu guaranteed that a platform to be known as the Business and Employment extension service would be established to help trainees get jobs.

Describing the project as a deliberate effort by the SDN to empower the youths in the Niger Delta, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Olotu Square, Bruce Lucas said the training will transform the region into an important technology hub where people from other places can source for digital skill.

On how to motivate women to participate and inspire them to remain committed to the training, CEO of Spital Labs, Kenneth Nwokoro said several women have been intentionally scheduled as instructors as a way to motivate the women to aspire to be like their trainers who are also like them. 

He said successful trainees would become role models to their immediate communities and their success stories will be used to inspire other women to participate in the training.

“We are very intentional about women in Tech and we will do all we can to grow the number of women in the tech space”, he said.

“We also have ladies we have scheduled in our hub to also provide mentoring and coaching support when they are out of the program”.

“There are platforms we are going to showcase to the ladies in the entrepreneurship class, online platforms where you can get remote jobs. Some of our instructors who are also doing remote jobs will be expected to point these places to them so they can also earn in the much needed foreign currency”.

Obinwanne pointed out that trainees from the rural areas do not necessarily need to be relocated to the urban centers after the training as they can start earning from the comfort of their homes even if they are in the rural areas.

Ifeoma Ndukwu said a lot has changed in the direction of cultural inhibitions as the study taken before the event showed that nearly 80% of the men in the rural areas showed support for the women who want to acquire these skills.

Reducing Digital Gender Gaps is designed and implemented by SDN to reduce the   digital gender gap by providing tailored digital skills training for women and establish links between them and job providers in the tech sector and supporting women-owned businesses grow throw provision of digital training.

The project will be implemented in collaboration with The Youth Alive Foundation (YAF) and TalkLove Africa (TAF), both of them non-governmental and not-for-profit organizations since 2004, to support communities in the Niger Delta.