‘Take Centre Stage’ winner Thoko Miya redefines tech industry to be more inclusive
Gender inclusivity is gaining momentum and as we acknowledge International Women’s Month this March, it’s key to note that more women are joining the traditionally male-dominated ICT sector than men. This is a major step forward. The Commission for Employment Equity’s 23rd Employment Equity Report for the 2022/2023 financial year reveals that in 2023 the ICT sector reported that 58,7% of males made up its workforce while, importantly, women employees increased to 41,3% in 2023 up from 39,5% in the previous period.
This means that an additional 54 670 women entered the sector during the reported period. This is significant as women have traditionally been absent from the ICT sector, for myriad reasons, and their increased presence at the South African tech sector table is noteworthy.
Greater sector inclusivity is the North Star that inspires Thoko Miya, CEO of GirlHype, every day. The winner of the Retail Capital ‘Take Centre Stage’ competition, she is nothing short of an activist and CEO whose aim is to enable more women to gain access to the ICT sector. For the past decade Miya has been laser focused on upskilling girls, and young women, in areas such as coding, programming and computer science – areas that South African women have historically lacked skills in and access to.
While in 2023 54,43% of women in South Africa were economically active (StatsSA), meaning roughly 45,57% were not, GirlHype has been playing a key role in upskilling women across the country. To date, the NPO has trained over 1-million females through its educational interventions (grade 6 – 12 after-school education in partnership with schools around the country; “code clubs” at universities and mentorship efforts for the unemployed) granting them greater entry into the tech sector and job security.
“It is our view and passion to empower girls and young women who largely come from disadvantaged backgrounds access to the tech sector by giving them early exposure to computer science and, through our efforts – involving them in our nationwide “Code Clubs” that provide training in critical skills that the local market urgently needs, boosting learners’ knowledge base, skills and hireability,” says Miya.
To put this into perspective, according to a recent ICT skills survey by Umazi, South Africa has a skills shortage of approximately 77,000 high-value digital jobs and outsources 300,000 tech jobs to overseas workers. To say we have a skills shortage is nothing but an understatement.
While the President is currently reviewing draft regulations with regards to remote working and critical skills visas – that will, if passed, make it easier for local businesses to attract skilled individuals into South Africa, to help develop and grow the economy – there appears to be a big, missed opportunity to invest in our people here at home instead of acquiring offshore skills.
“The talent that exists locally is immense. Yet our people, especially young women and girls, have been left out of the tech industry due to historical and stereotypical reasons. Now is the time to empower and enable them to play a critical role in our country’s massive skills gap and is why we are scaling our efforts to help millions more gain access to this sector, at pace” says Miya.
Thea Olivier is Executive: Retail Capital Operations – the country’s leading alternative SME financier and division of TymeBank – she says that individuals like Miya are exemplary and need support from government, the private sector and funding enablers. “Thoko’s story and efforts seriously impressed us and she received R100k in seed funding by winning our ‘Take Centre Stage’ competition which ran earlier this year. She intends to use the capital to digitise her organisation and scale it both locally and internationally, taking her training in tech to those who may not have had an opportunity to access the content, teaching and mentoring otherwise.”
Miya, at just 30 years old, has been involved in the GirlHype venture for a decade already having learnt everything she knows from her mother who founded the business in 2003 and whose steps she followed every Saturday to learn code. Through exposure to this training and clearly having a natural brilliance, by 11 Miya was joining classes of matrics to write that grade’s computer science exams – which she easily passed.
After attaining her Bachelor in Technology from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), she took over GirlHype from her mom and become its CEO in 2023. This saw Miya manage partnerships, funding, budgets, programmes and admin, among much more, all the while expanding her love of coding, and importantly sharing it through education with others.
Among Miya’s impetus is this: ICT training forms part of the STEM educational system (science, technology, engineering, art and maths) and, according to many including the World Bank, revolutionising the STEM ecosystem in South Africa, and across the continent, is urgent. This as countries with a high STEM human capital are competitive, productive and experience high economic growth. STEM subjects help learners adopt real-world applications, ignite their creativity while cultivating 21st-Century skills such as technology literacy, productivity and initiative.
“While we celebrated 30 years of democracy in 2023, there is no question that there is a generation of citizens that need help to make up for lost time. Our focus is on girls and young women, as well as those who are unemployed, but we do not exclude boys from our training. Our goal is to upskill as many young people as we can and is why the Retail Capital R100k winnings will be used to turn our manual operation into a tech-led effort that will reach many millions, everywhere via an app and website.
“As CEO I am enthused to help make a difference, as I also experienced how certain doors were closed to me. If it wasn’t for my mom, I may not have ended up here. But here I am and I want to make South Africa better for girls and women while providing the local ICT sector access to skills that are of the highest level and urgently needed,” concludes Miya.
To learn more about GirlHype visit https://girlhype.co.za/.
About The Author: Samantha
Samantha Perry is the owner and founder of SJ Perry PR, a small, independent agency that specialises in providing public relations and media relations services to small to medium-sized businesses. She recently served as the JHB Agency Lead for Irvine Partners, an integrated public relations and marketing agency. She has over 20 years' of experience writing for a range of media - print and online - mainly in the ICT sector including Computing SA (editor), ComputerWeek, and Brainstorm magazine (editor). In her capacity as a PR professional and consultant, she has and does work with a variety of companies including Google (South Africa & Nigeria), Salesforce, CLEVVA, Euphoria Telecom, Paymenow and Tiger Content (UK). She also has a Masters degree in ICT Policy & Regulation. She served on the IAB SA Marketing Council as the PR rep, has worked as an independent telecoms researcher for some of the analyst houses in that field and was regularly called upon to comment on telecoms issues in the press. Nowadays she can be found commenting on women in tech issues in the press and speaking at conferences on the subject and the issues women in the sector face.
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