The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) through its objective to promote the participation of rural women in the development of digital skills and innovation with BujaHub through its mission and objective to foster innovation and job creation for women in Africa in general and Burundi in particular and help solve real problems of the market and the community have organized the program “Digital Ladies” which brought together 65 talented women from different fields of interest, of which 25 will be divided into 5 groups, of 5 people with the objective of diligently researching, finding facts and developing feasible, innovative and scalable solutions that are essential to solving problems, and the remaining 40 will be trained in 5 digital fields and placed in organizations for internship.
The Digital Ladies program aims to:
- Identify, train and connect untapped female talent to companies and organizations that may need their innovation, talent and/or problem-solving skills;
- Advance the goal of increasing women's employment through technological entrepreneurship for economic growth in Burundi;
- Promote the role of women in innovation, creativity and digital entrepreneurship for active technology, economic and community development;
- To help advance the promotion of small and medium enterprise growth and workforce development among women in Burundi through training, mentoring and business coaching;
- Help start-up businesses successfully establish and take root in the targeted community so that once they are established, they become permanent contributors to the vitality, diversity and overall growth of the country's economy.
The 1st component of the 25 women entrepreneurs are working on digital solutions to existing problems in the Burundian market in the sectors of:
- Health,
- Education
- Trade
- Agriculture and livestock
- Transport.
The 2nd component of the Digital Ladies Program concerns the capacity building of 40 young women and girls on employability and their placement; they have learned 5 themes including
- Digital marketing
- Graphic Design
- Web Design
- Photography
- Videography
For the 1st component of the Digital Ladies, the women continue to attend sessions at BujaHub to work on and refine their projects that will not only benefit the Burundian community, but will also contribute to the development of the country.
As for the 2nd component, the Digital Ladies had the opportunity to follow a series of training with different experts regardless of the fields, which prepares them for a professional life; which they will be led to pursue in the chosen digital professions. In the last session, all the women followed a session on personal and professional development. The aim was to teach these women the importance and impact of doing self study for the good development of their career.