Visiting University of Nairobi and ENGAGE

How can gender imbalance in data science be addressed?

This is a question Prof Julius Oyugi at University of Nairobi, Kenya, has taken an interest in, brainstormed with his colleagues and created ENGAGE Project KE. When Kajsa Hallberg Adu, Uppsala University's Forum for Africa Studies visited University of Nairobi she got to know more about the project and witness alumn of CoRE AI - Cluster of Research Excellence in AI PhD visiting program Ochukut Selina Atwani in action.

The ENGAGE encourages high school girls to consider data science by offering them a summer school experience showing this is both interesting and doable!

The pilot program for 120 women students (from a pool of over 1200 applicants!) offers training in collaboration with local universities all over Kenya. Kajsa also visited the training of trainers at Kenya School of Government and had a chance to speak to the teachers of the program about how important their work is and how CoRE AI - Cluster of Research Excellence in AI is getting ready to also scale the room for women higher up in the education system!

We thank Profs Timothy Kamanu and Patrick Weke for the invitation and the support for the future of data science!