AI For Development: Girls Shaping The Digital Future

Somewhere across Africa today, a girl is learning to build her first web app, sitting in on her first AI masterclass, or submitting an application to a tech fellowship that could change the direction of her career. She represents exactly what International Girls in ICT Day 2026 is about. This year’s theme, “AI for Development: Girls Shaping the Digital Future,” is a recognition that the future of AI on this continent depends on the continuous access girls like her have to the skills, tools, and opportunities that make building a career in tech possible.

Africa currently stands at the edge of a significant AI-driven economic growth, with projections pointing to tens of millions of new digital jobs by 2030. Yet the pipeline of women and girls entering AI and tech industry remains thin. Women make up less than a third of the global STEM workforce, and within AI specifically, the numbers are even smaller. That gap in representation is resulting in an economic problem, and it is costing Africa a lot.

There is also the confidence issue in girls and women. According to research done by AI Literacy Institute, only 56% of young women report confidence in using generative AI tools, compared to 74% of their male peers. Left unaddressed, that gap in confidence becomes a gap in participation, and eventually, a gap in earnings and opportunity.

For the girl somewhere across Africa taking her first step into tech today, how far she goes depends on whether she has access to training, mentorship, and the kind of communities that help turn potential into a career.

Why Girls Must Be at the Center of AI's Development

There are two reasons why more girls and women need to be at the center of AI’s development. The first is representation. The second, and equally important, is the cost of building AI without their input.

AI systems trained on biased or incomplete data have been shown to disadvantage women in recruitment, pay decisions, credit scoring, and access to services. This is not a hypothetical risk. A study by the Berkeley Haas Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership analyzed 133 AI systems across different industries and found that about 44% of them showed gender bias, and 25% exhibited both gender and racial bias.

A UNESCO study further reinforced this, finding that large language models (LLMs) associated women with words like “home,” “family,” and “children” while linking men to “business,” “executive,” and “career.” The underrepresentation of women in the development and adoption of AI increases the risk of gender-biased technologies, and without safeguards, generative AI can amplify these inequalities at scale.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) also recently found that occupations dominated by women are almost twice as likely to be exposed to generative AI automation risk as male-dominated ones, meaning women stand to lose the most if AI development continues without their inclusion.

The argument remains that when women are not involved in designing AI systems, these systems will continue to perpetuate bias. As such, getting girls into ICT is not just an empowerment goal. It is a quality control issue for the technology Africa wants to build at scale.

How Tech4Dev is Helping Women and Girls Shape the Digital Future

For over a decade, Tech4Dev has been working to close the gap between where African women and girls are and where they need to be in the digital economy. The approach is not limited to one program or one moment, as it runs across a structured pipeline that meets women and girls at different stages, from secondary school to early career and entrepreneurship.

At the foundational level, our TechGirls Drive advocacy takes AI and STEM awareness directly into schools and communities across 30 African countries, targeting girls between the ages of 10 and 20. The goal is to mentor young girls early, especially before they decide that technology is not for them.

For women who are ready to go deeper, the Women Techsters Bootcamp offers a three-week monthly training across five learning paths, designed to introduce women and girls to intermediate-level technology skills and help them jump-start careers or close knowledge gaps in emerging technologies. Beyond the Bootcamp, the Women Techsters Fellowship runs as a full year-long tuition-free program, combining six months of intensive virtual training with six months of practical work experience through internships, volunteering, and freelancing.

And as part of our 2026 roadmap, Tech4Dev has also introduced AI Learning Circles and Industry Masterclasses focused on using artificial intelligence intentionally and responsibly.

Across all of these programs is the understanding that economic inclusion for women in tech is not achieved through a single intervention. It requires building an entire ecosystem, and that is what Tech4Dev has spent the last decade doing.

To mark this year's International Girls in ICT Day, Tech4Dev is hosting the Women Techsters Open Day, a free virtual event with the theme "AI for Development: Girls Shaping the Digital Future." Holding on Thursday, April 30,2026, at 4:00 PM WAT,the event brings together industry experts such as AWS Cloud Trainer Racheal Popoola, Angela Audu, a Senior Security Analyst, and Andia Loice, Co-founder and Managing Director of Acoruss. We encourage women who’re looking to build a tech career to register here.

Happy International Girls in ICT Day!