Our Mission
Women in Technology Uganda (WiTU) is a social enterprise aiming to connect underserved Ugandan women and girls to meaningful and dignified careers. Through specialized programs, WiTU fosters high-quality business and vocational skills to improve the future socioeconomic status of these young ladies. Participants in our programs also receive connections to financial services and support, building the possibilities of entrepreneurship.
The Unemployment Paradox
According to the National Development Plan III, more than 700,000 Ugandan youth enter the labor force each year while only about 34% of them are absorbed by the labor market. This is particularly problematic as 78% of Uganda’s total population is still under 30.
The silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic was the opportunity for the same population to be discovered by the power of the digital economy. When compared to the years preceding 2020, the number of online gigs increased by 350%. With COVID-19 behind us, digital skills remain critical in an increasingly globalized community.
Unfortunately, the majority of youth in Uganda have no knowledge of how to access these digital opportunities, and women still fall far behind when it comes to access and affordability that would enable them to participate in the digital economy.
Siezing the Strategic Opportunity
In October 2020, the WiTU Digital Job Centre was launched to transition over 100 young ladies in the Elevate Employment programme from physical gig work opportunities to virtual placements. While the lockdowns from COVID-19 continued, WiTU engaged five global partners and secured three contracts with Cadence Design Systems, Adobe Systems, and Isahit.com to deliver 50 digital work contracts valued at 1 million UGX per lady employed. A total of 100 ladies were engaged, but only half were retained due to lack of a diverse talent database, a slower manual sourcing to deployment process, and a lack of quality skills to match market demand.
Continued Solutions
With the launch of our new digital job centre (DJC) in November of 2023, it is our hope that we can continue to transition young ladies into fulfilling employment in technology and increase the retention rate more than ever.
WiTU has partnered with several local and international entities on career building initiatives over the last few years. This has allowed us to gain insight on the youth skills gap and better pilot programs to connect over 50 women to global professional digital works.
The new DJC is a platform created to recruit, train, and stage young talent, preparing them to succeed in a competitive global marketplace. By acting as a tool to increase the pipeline of young women to digital careers, the DJC connects ladies to careers requiring skills of high demand today: graphic design, data science, DevOps engineering, UX/UI design, mobile application development, and more.
