High-Tech Center for Nigerian Women and Youth has ended a three-day summit where women were trained in solar panel production and bio gas for economic gains to their respective communities.
The summit held in collaboration with females in STEM Development Information and Renewable Technologies, STEM Girls and Nigeria Females in STEM (NigFiSTEM) which took place at the Raw Materials Council, Maitama, Abuja, came to a close on Wednesday.
The CEO High-Tech Center for Nigerian Women and Youth, Dr Wunmi Hassan said the goal was to bring more women to excel in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) for a technological driven economy in Nigeria.
According to her, the center has trained over 1,000 women, girls and youth in eight states since December 2018 when this initiative began.
She said more women should embrace innovation and technology as only two-third was willing to go the extra mile.
She said :”This is a summit for us and a second edition since last year that we started on STEM women. We have had several initiatives in High-Tech Center which is centered around women in ICT or women in technology generally but this is particularly for women in STEM and it is under our #HiddenNoMore Nigeria Females in STEM initiative.
“We intentionally wanted women who read science, technology, engineering or mathematics to begin to see how they utilize them to see how we can become producers of these technologies. It’s a very ambitious one but we are ready to dare because you know all the technology that are brought to Nigeria are done by somebody, some didn’t even go to school but because they are passionate they are doing things.
“So, for us in Nigeria, the initiative was borne when I was nominated as the #HiddenNoMore representative to U.S for women in STEM and seeing quite a lot of all these things all over the place so there was a drive to see more women in NIgeria begin to do more things especially in technology.
“Last year when we had this summit, we said we don’t want it to be a talk show so we looked at what it is to produce or create so that when we gather every year like this we will have something to show. We looked at the various challenges that we have in Nigeria and science and technology projects that can support. And Then power became very obvious to us. That’s why in the last couple of months that we got partners who could train us how to do the solar panels locally we began that advocacy, empowerment and traing for women and girls and of course many men.
“Next we want to shift to biogas simply from waste around us. We want to explore that and Nigeria will be better for it. The summit is to ensure that the biogas and phone production and not coupling become a reality in Nigeria,”
The summit was attended by enterpreneurs and representatives of Kogi, Kaduna, Taraba state government and federal mininstries.
