Aramide Abe is an entrepreneur and the founder of a virtual sector-agnostic startup accelerator and 65k member entrepreneurship community, which has a mission to facilitate sustainable small business growth in Africa.
She will be speaking at the African Women in Technology (AWIT) conference on the ‘It’s all Digital‘ panel. Here is our little introduction of Abe to our readers:
It represents opportunities and a smarter way of working and democratizing access to information to enable startups in our community to make informed decisions to build sustainable businesses.
How long have you been exposed to the African tech field, and how has this influenced your knowledge of technological advancement in Africa?
10 years, if we talk about direct exposure and impact.
How digital do you think our society has become?
It has grown but it has a long way to go if you look at counterpart nations like Rwanda, etc. We have a large population, 40% of whom are youth and need to be empowered and equipped with digital skills and training.
How has evolving technology affected SME’s in Africa?
Technology has created access to opportunities, allowed for disruption of various business models, created an impact when it comes to addressing social/environmental issues and caused economic development in terms of job creation and skills acquisition (ease of accessing courses/learning new skills)
It is believed that we are being launched into the third-fourth industrial revolution, and this digitization will consequently change the politics of jobs. How do you think women in Africa can take advantage of this to advance and stay relevant?
First of all, women need to be more aware of opportunities for them in technology and so one way, would be to stay abreast of development/news/updates in that space by joining women’s tech networks, reading the news; secondly, signing for programmes, capacity building and training and thirdly, applying for opportunities. In addition, training and up-skilling other women is a highly untapped market, with funding available so this presents opportunities for many women who are currently in technology and want to make an impact.