RIYADH — Microsoft Arabia was one of the keynote speakers at the 2nd Women Enablement in Technology Sector Summit. The focus of the summit is encouraging and training more women to enter the exciting world of information and communications technology (ICT).

This summit is aligned with the Saudi Vision 2030 and aligns perfectly with Microsoft’s own mission to empowering people and organizations to achieve more. The summit, which is hosted by the Saudi Ministry of Communication & Information Technology, is being held at King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center here on March 8.

Events that work towards equipping women with the training and skills they need to be successful in sectors like ICT are becoming increasingly important and for good reason. As Niamh Spelman, Microsoft’s head of services in the Middle East and Africa, points out — “the world of technology will benefit significantly from greater diversity” when it comes to gender.

Notably, in the Middle East females make up less than 10% of the region’s technical workforce. However, as part of its Vision 2030, the Saudi government is determined to change this and has launched a range of initiatives to ensure it happens. The Women Enablement in Technology Sector Summits are part of this initiative and bring together stakeholders and experts in the field from around the globe for a day of discussions, workshops, and presentations.

As mentioned, “empowering women to do more” aligns closely with Microsoft mission. Over the past few decades, the company has developed and implemented a number of pathways and programs designed to educate, upskill, and equip more women to take up the challenge of careers in the technical and communications sector. Microsoft Arabia therefore regards this as an important opportunity to share their experience and knowledge in this area with other like-minded professionals and organizations.

Spelman’s talk at the summit focused on “unleashing the power of women” and she said it will bring numerous “tangible benefits” to families, local communities, national, and global economies. She further maintained that ‘increasing women’s employment in MENA could increase household incomes by 25%.” Microsoft Arabia is ideally positioned to help make this happen.

At the summit, Ms. Spelman announced the Microsoft DigiGirlz initiative 2020 which will be in partnership with MCIT and Think Tech. DigiGirlz, is one of Microsoft’s efforts to invest in STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Math) education for women and build a pipeline of future workers ready for the challenges of the global economy.

The initiative will be launched in 3 cities during this year (Riyadh, Jeddah & the Eastern Province). The first stage of this initiative, Train The Trainer, has already been accomplished with the training of 90 Saudi trainers, who will then train and support students who participate in DigiGirlz events.

The second phase is using MS Minecraft Education to train some 600 female students from intermediate schools in those cities, thus opening new career pathways in the ITC sector. The result should be to encourage young women to explore careers in technology and create a steady stream of capable, highly educated women in the sector.

When asked whether initiatives like these, and events like the Women Enablement in Technology Sector Summits, been successful in this regard, she said, “Current indications are that there have been some significant impacts made around skilling and employment of Saudi Arabian women with a projection of over 63,000 new jobs being created between 2017 and 2022.”

“Over 1 and a half million Saudi students have taken part in the Hour of Code, a Computer Science Education Week and Code.org global initiative that reaches millions of students every year. Almost 30,000 training and skilling events have been held and more than 50,000 trainers have obtained various certifications through those events. There are now more than 30,000 teachers with certified training on Microsoft technologies.”

Ms. Spelman said that women now make up some 35% of the technical entrepreneurs in the region. That’s a considerable achievement and demonstrates that there is demand among women with technical backgrounds to explore careers in the sector. — SG