New partnership to enable 1 million young women coders by 2030
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud-computing arm of Alibaba Group has announced the Tech for Change initiative at the Mobile World Congress (MWC). The initiative calls for inspiring ideas and joint efforts from enterprises, start-ups and young entrepreneurs, to tackle global social and humanitarian challenges in areas such as education, economic development and the environment through technologies.
Alibaba Cloud, which provides cloud infrastructure to transform businesses digitally, will contribute to the initiative by offering partners with access to its technology expertise, global computing resources and talent development programs including Alibaba Cloud Academy and its AI competition platform Tianchi.
One of the first partnerships of the Tech for Change initiative is aimed at supporting female education across the world. The first collaboration revealed at the MWC is with iamtheCODE, the first African-led global movement to mobilise governments, businesses and the philanthropic foundation on STEAMED (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, Entrepreneurship, and Design) education. The partnership will support young women programmers in marginalised communities through free online training and free access to cloud computing resources, with the aim to enable one million woman and girl coders by the year 2030.
Under the partnership with iamtheCODE, Alibaba Cloud will provide tailored courses on a range of topics including cloud computing, data analysis, machine learning and security. iamtheCODE will also add Alibaba Cloud on their blended curriculum, as certificates will be awarded to young women students who pass the course to help them along with their career path towards engineering and other practical subjects. To date over 13,000 girls have access to the iamtheCODE Curriculum. In addition, each enrolled student will be offered free access to cloud computing resources during their study.
“For iamtheCODE, priorities are to use technology to change the lives of young women entrepreneur through tech, to create employability and to equip them with the digital skills of the future. We are truly honoured and excited for the young women as they will have access to the new technological advancements of Alibaba Cloud. This moment is truly historic,” said Mariéme Jamme, Founder of iamtheCODE.
