DotConnectAfrica (DCA) has announced the winners of its 2018 Miss.Africa Digital Seed Funding for STEM programmes, awarding cash grants to initiatives in Ghana, Tunisia and Seychelles.
The Miss.Africa Digital Programme is a gender-focused initiative targeted mainly at female youth audiences in Africa to increase their personal involvement in early technology use and adoption.
Its Africa-focused seed fund, now in its fourth year, offers grants to support women and girls in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programmes to launch or expand their own initiatives that will increase their digital opportunities in IT related training, jobs and leadership roles.
The grand prize of US$5,000 went to Ghana’s Kumasi Hive, a multi-space innovation place for rapid prototyping of ideas, budding local innovations, impact start-up support and promoting youth entrepreneurship.
Meanwhile, US$1,000 second prizes went to the Seychelles-based Eco-Sol, whose “Full STEM Ahead!” project aims to get more girls involved with STEM subjects, and Tunisia’s INTELLECT-Team, which focuses on effective deployment of IoT systems for diverse applications.
“Our winners have one thing in common, their desire and grit to impart digital skills to young African scholars and is inspiring. They have shown potential for partnership and effort to drive educational value, their projects rated high during evaluations,” said Kim Gueho, DCA Trust corporate trustee.
