Saturday 8 October 2016

Kenyan girls who code: Mentors spur African tech innovations

The Snipers
Kenyan schoolgirls are building apps to end ticket queues and transform organ donation, with the help of new mentor programmes promoting women in tech, writes the BBC's Anthony Irungu.

Sixteen-year old Harriet Karanja had been waiting a while in queue to buy a bus ticket in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, when someone else who was waiting was robbed.

When she retold her tale at school she found out her classmates had experienced the same problem.

What if, she asked, they could get rid of the queue for the tickets altogether?

She got together with four other school friends to make an app to buy a bus ticket, working with the support of a mentor as part of a scheme backed by Kenyan mobile phone company Safaricom.


They tested out a prototype version of the app on a long-distance bus across Kenya.
The Snipers

No comments: