Girls in ICT Day for Mauritius

International Girls in ICT Day will be celebrated worldwide on 25 April 2024 with the theme “Leadership“, to underscore the critical need for strong female role models in STEM. The guiding objective of Girls in ICT Day is to bridge the barriers girls face in ICT education and to reduce gender inequalities by providing digital skills and tools to girls.

Although globally, women now fill 40% of high-skill occupations, their participation in ICT-related fields continues to be low and are relatively scarce in software development, research, academia, digital start-ups and at the highest levels of management or policy making. They also most often find themselves in junior or support roles with less opportunity for advancement and they also tend to leave science and technology jobs at higher rates than men.

Over the years MDPA, in collaboration with the Ministry of Information Technology, Communication and Innovation, has regularly marked this day through various activities, some of the main ones included:
• Presentations in State Secondary Schools and Career Talks during Infotech
• Video Interviews in 2019 of 8 Women IT Role Models, posted on social media
• Organisation of 4 Boot Camps in 2022 where some 150 girls, from 36 secondary schools of the 4 Educational Zones, participated and were introduced 2-day hands-on session to teach them block coding using programmable devices
• Short Video Competition in 2023 where 51 teams comprising 176 girls scripted, filmed and produced videos within three themes, namely Cyber Bullying, Bridging Digital Divide between younger and older generations and Transitioning the Physical towards the Digital.