18 May 2017

A total of 100 girls from pre-school to secondary schools in the North East District were equipped with Information Communication Technology (ICT) skills as part of the International Girls in ICT day commemoration.

The week long ICT workshop which was a curtain raiser for the main event engaged different stakeholders in the telecommunications industry who trained the girl child on the basics of ICT.

The girls were also taken on tour of Francistown airport and Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) control and technical centre to learn and appreciate the role of ICT as part of the buildup to the commemoration which was held on May 17.

Speaking at the commemoration in Masunga on May 17, principal system analyst at the Department of Information Technology Ms Masego Morake said the International girls in ICT day was meant to empower and equip a girl child to access and develop interest in ICT at a young age.

She highlighted that ICT had many benefits in doing day to day business as it helped speed up processes.

She further noted that ICT played a critical role in ensuring that education was accessible to all through the use of computers and other technologies.

“ICT is the future. Every career is ICT driven nowadays. Therefore take your studies seriously so that you reap the rewards of being ICT engineers,” she said.

In his remarks, Kgosi Thabo Maruje III of Masunga thanked all the telecommunications stakeholders for finding it fit to commemorate the day in his village.

He said the celebration was a landmark for the village and would motivate the girl child to aim higher in her studies.

He urged the girls to take advantage of the opportunity to acquaint themselves with all the necessary skills in ICT.

Kgosi Masunga stated that children of today were lucky because of all the existing technology tools that connected the world .

“This is an opportunity for you as a girl child for your dreams to come true because there is a lot you have learnt over the past days.”

He told the girls to have ambition and never think that growing in a village was a disadvantage.

The Kgosi further said defilement was a cancer in the society which challenged everyone to pay attention to the girl child in the family, school or community so as to protect them.

He highlighted that defilement had deprived a girl child opportunity to experience and enjoy childhood.

Giving motivation to the girls, BTC engineer Ms Bokamoso Lekgoa said being a woman engineer needed one to be committed and working hard to conquer a field that was male dominated.

She said being a woman should not limit one but rather motivate them to dream big and aim for the same dreams that men had.

Ms Lekgoa encouraged the girls to be bold in the classrooms and compete equally with boys. ENDS