Why do we exist?
The ability to code gives a person influence.
Technology is infused into the 21c work environment and civic society and so the people who are best positioned to contribute to the global economy and civic society are those with a 21C skill set, which includes being able to code.
Black people are unnecessarily excluded from the tech industry by an education system that doesn’t work in their favour.
The deep scars of the apartheid education system remain in South Africa, and still today black people are less likely to receive high quality education than their white counterparts.
Educational inequality excludes black people from sharing in the value of the tech industry. A white child in South Africa is 10 times more likely to get the school leaving results they need to study Engineering at university than their black counterpart.
Black women face even greater obstacles.
The structure of society means that globally women receive less education, receive less paid employment and are paid less for their labour. Gender norms mean that many girls choose against IT related careers and study paths, despite their aptitude.
In the Western Cape, 5 times fewer girls leave school with IT as a school subject. All these factors inhibit women from being able to use technology effectively in the economy and civil society.
The result is that only 1 in 5 global IT executives are women, with a fraction of those black women.
We must break the cycle that excludes people from having influence in the global tech economy.
It is not true that someone’s race or gender makes them inherently more or less good at coding. Rather, systems keep people out.
With the resources we have, we attempt to change these systems.
We invest in the education of women and black people;
We create high-growth employment opportunities for black people;
We make young women in IT visible.
We believe society and our economy stand to benefit if we have more people contributing to the technology we use every day.