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Ivy Barley's quest to get girls coding and employed is off to a fast start
So great has her impact been that she was named as one of the Top 50 Most Influential Young Ghanaians in 2017.
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The CEO and Co-Founder, Developers in Vogue is currently shaping a world where more African women will be daring enough to lead in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.
“The statistics of women in technology is very bad and I read from the world Economic Forum it is going to take 63 years to close the gender gap and that is actually very sad and alarming so we want to promote women in technology because women are very innovative, women represent the populations so we need to have more women on board so that we can produce more innovative tech products and services that would represent the whole populations so that is how we want to make an impact in Africa so that females all around Africa from Nairobi to Accra from Lagos to Addis Ababa have the opportunity to play a vital role in the data revolution” She told Business Insider Sub-Saharan Africa during an interview at Nairobi Garage.
She co-founded Developers in Vogue in 2017 to train females in the latest technologies and connect them to real-time projects and jobs and hopes to pitch her product to judges at the final of the Kwese backed contest at Nairobi's Strathmore College.
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Apart from the money, the winners will get a two-week mentorship opportunity as inaugural Kwesé Entrepreneur Fellows with Econet Global founder, Strive Masiyiwa at Kwesé offices in South Africa and additionally interact with other leading African entrepreneurs and innovators, and take part in other Kwesé Inc initiatives planned for later this year and Ivy is determined to walk away with the money.
“We are really looking forward to winning this money, I have actually been given a warning that if I don’t bring the money I must stay in Kenya so I am very motivated, so we plan to use the money to have more women in our tech community because they are not actually a lot of them so we want to use this money to train 200 females in the next one year and also connect them to the job opportunities”
While money is important especially for a startup company like her, Ivy also knows the old adage of ‘don’t give a man fish rather teach him how to fish’
“But much more important is we are looking forward to the mentorship programme with Econet Global founder, Strive Masiyiwa because that is like a dream come true, I really want to learn from him especially because he is a global business managerial entrepreneur and I believe that his experience and networks can be highly valuable to my company”
Through, Developers in Vogue Ivy is quickly proving critics wrong that tech is a man’s world.
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“My background is in Mathematical statistics, I completed my masters class last year and I also had an opportunity to work in a pre-university as a teaching assistant, while there I began to teach the girls Math, statistics and Computer programming but prior to going to that school I had been hearing people say that women don’t like technology, women are afraid of computers and women don’t like to learn how to code but the young girls I met were very passionate, they were always looking forward to lessons they always had ideas which they shared it with more most of the times"
Her passion for tech would however see her collide with authorities and saw her fired from her job.
“Fortunately or unfortunately I got fired from my job but I think it was the best because when I got fired I got back home and I just couldn’t stop thinking about the girls and all the great ideas they had so I kept having dreams of myself teaching girls and promoting women in technology”
And like other entrepreneurs before her she decided to turn her idea into action and unknowingly sparked a tech revolution in Ghana.
In their first week of opening applications for the first coding boot camp, they had close to 300 people signing up to be a part though the slots were then able to have 20 people on the programme.
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“So I decided to give it a try last year and we did a pilot and trained 20 women in web development and 14 of them already got jobs and we seek to do more especially this year”
Developers in Vogue has been featured on various national and international media platforms.
“My dream for Africa is I see an Africa where we are not dependent on Foreign Aid, I see an Africa where people are motivated to work hard to change the narrative of the continent because I believe we have a great potential as African and it is up to us decide the future of our continent”
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