[afnog] AfChix Hosts the 4th TechWomen Summit 2024 as a ReUnion

[Dorcas Muthoni]

AfChix held its fourth “TechWomen Summit” online event on 11th September
2024 as a reunion. The virtual event dubbed ‘AFCHIX REUNION 2024’ brought
together women from Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Botswana, Malawi, Nigeria,
Mauritius, and Morocco. We got a chance to reconnect and reignite the
face-to-face community engagement forums after the slowdown that resulted
from the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a side event hosted alongside the Africa
Internet Summit (AIS) 2024. <https://www.internetsummit.africa/>

The event featured diverse discussions and conversations. We had a chance
to hear the “before and after” reflection-based themed career journey of
members of the AfChix community. We also more specifically discussed the
future of AfChix. Key highlights included the following:

Strategic Plan: In 2023, AfChix launched a strategic plan that focuses on
defining strategic pillars that are important for the growth of the
organization to scale our program work. These include:

   1.

   Strong Organization: There is a need to strengthen corporate governance
   so that AfChix as a body and an organization can have leadership structures
   that allow us to be a long-term organization offering value to our
   community members. We have gone ahead to set up a board and an
   International Advisory Panel that will offer visionary input in steering
   the organization into the future. AfChix is registered as a non-profit
   organization in Kenya where we now have a secretariat and I am very
   grateful to our current team for driving the future of AfChix
   <https://afchix.org/about-us/#ourteam>.
   2.

   Building Strong Chapters: The AfChix strategic plan envisages an AfChix
   Community built on strong chapters driven by techwomen role-model
   volunteers. AfChix activities with 25 Chapters have included: advocacy,
   mentorship, capacity building, role modeling, networking, sharing
   opportunities, digital literacy, summits, and conferences. We want to do
   more of these activities with our champions and role models to continue
   growing and keeping the pipeline of women in computing careers in Africa.
   We want to formalize, strengthen, and increase AfChix Chapters. Members
   expressed interest in starting new chapters and joining existing chapters.
   3.

   Capacity Building Programs:  Even though we have had many technical
   skills capacity activities over the years and computing career workshops
   for high school girls, we intend to turn them into deliberate programs. We
   intend to work on strong evidence-guided programs that feature mentorship,
   technical hands-on skilling, leadership capacity building, role modeling,
   networking, sharing opportunities, policy influence, advocacy, digital
   literacy, summits, and conferences. Our flagship focus on mentorship will
   remain our strong motivation in the delivery of our programs.
   4.

   Capacity Building in Leadership:  We realize that there are various
   practical skills you need at different levels of your career. We have seen
   that as technical women progress into leadership roles, they have different
   challenges and we plan to enhance our programs so that we are taking women
   through support initiatives that touch across, from formation all through
   to leadership roles, where the ball game is a bit different.
   5.

   Communication: We also want to continue with the community engagement
   work that we are doing. We want to be very deliberate about putting
together impact
   stories <https://afchix.org/afchix-impact-stories/> because they make a
   difference. We believe that learning from each others’ journeys will
   inspire us all. This is why we are putting together this series of impact
   stories ‘celebrating my journey
   <https://afchix.org/afchix-impact-stories/>’ about how people have
   interacted with AfChix and what has happened to their careers over time. We
   are enthusiastic about having more online events and webinars hosted by
   members of our community going forward.
   6.

   Evidence Generation and Policy Influence: We simply don’t want women to
   be users of technology, we want them to be creators, people who influence
   how technology is designed, created, and implemented. We want to generate
   gender-disaggregated data that will influence policy to reduce the leakage
   across the career pipeline of women in computing.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all our community members who
shared their “before and after” reflection-based themed career journey
stories that have been published on our website impact stories page: AFCHIX
Impact Stories – AFCHIX <https://afchix.org/afchix-impact-stories/>.

We continue to welcome AfNOGChix/AfChix community members' career journey
stories. No story is too young or too small. By recollecting and sharing
your career journey, you get to see and celebrate how far you have come.
You see how well you have navigated challenges and overcome obstacles.
Stories, like these already published build identity and a sense of
purpose. They also make others relate to and celebrate our individual and
diverse experiences in the journey of life.

We have also streamlined our social media platforms to enhance community
engagement and invite our internet ecosystem community to follow us:

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/afchix/

X:

https://x.com/Afchix


For more information, create or join a chapter, reach out to us at
admin at afchix.org
See you at the 5th TechWomen Summit 2025 in AIS'25! We are because you are!
-- 
With sincere gratitude,
Dr. Dorcas Muthoni
*Founder, **AfCHIX*
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