Swedish telecommunications provider Ericsson has reinforced its calls for gender diversity in the ICT sector by supporting an initiative that was rolled out in Cairo, Egypt.
The program which has been entitled ‘Tekla Dialogue’ has been specifically designed to address female underrepresentation in the tech sector.
The start of the two-day event coincided with International Women’s Day, and was held at the Swedish embassy in Cairo.
On the first day of the interactive workshop, engineers from the AI subdivision at Ericsson Egypt delivered training to 30 girls from Egyptian schools.
The workshop was focused on several ICT-related topics such as data encryption, AI and innovation.
Sameh Shoukry, Ericsson Egypt Country, said the global ICT vendor was fully committed to achieving gender equality and wanted to bridge the gaps that exist in terms of gender imbalance in the tech workforce.
“Ericsson Egypt’s celebration of International Women’s Day this year will be through holding events and workshops in cooperation with experts from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH), with the aim of achieving added value for girls, as we believe in the need to achieve gender equality, as well as the need to provide a platform for discussion about challenges facing women such as stereotypes and rules that cause imbalances between the sexes with respect to science, technology and innovation, in a bid to find solutions through dialogue and training, said Shoukry.
During the second day, a panel was held on the underrepresentation of women in the technology sector, which addressed means to increase opportunities to empower women and girls.
The panel, was joined by Amir Sherif, CEO and Founder of ‘Wazzuf’ and ‘Forasna’, Randa El Sawi, News and Media Director at Ericsson Middle East and Africa, Dr. Sherif El Qassas, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the American University in Cairo and an expert in security management, software engineering and open source technologies and Yasmine Moustafa, an Egyptian scientist specialising in energy and environment engineering, who had asteroid ‘31910 Moustafa’ named in her honor by NASA.
Tekla Dialogue is an initiative that was kickstarted by Swedish pop star Robyn, and this event in Cairo was the first time the program was held in the Middle East.
