Cameroon: Changing mentalities, one step at a time 

Fulani women often face barriers to their education including expectations that women focus on domestic and family responsibilities, practices such as early marriage and arranged marriages, and financial constraints and inadequate educational infrastructure.

Habiba, a Fulani woman, wanted to make a change. An engineer in information systems and software engineering, she joined the Techwomen Factory project’s data science course.

The project, in partnership with the Cameroon Youth School Tech Incubator, was first established in 2021. The project supports women 18 to 35 years old who are unemployed or underemployed by adding a high level of digital competency to their existing credentials.

During her training, Habiba succeeded in applying digital technology in the health sector, where she worked on an application to predict the risk of pre-eclampsia or eclampsia in pregnant women. Techwomen Factory also gave her additional skills to design applications that will generate, store and analyse data.

The project was presented at a UN Women ceremony, and a demonstration was requested by The World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health in Cameroon.

Habiba is now invited to events as a panelist to share her experience as a specialist in data management and analysis. It’s at these events, she says, that she realizes that she too can inspire other young people like herself.