Sharon Okpoe has lived her entire 17 years in Makoko, known as the world's largest "floating slum (贫民窟） ” ，built on a lake in Lagos, Nigeria. Okpoe's father is a fisherman, and her mother sells smoked fish.
As many as two-thirds of the city's 21 million residents live in slums. "Most girls are trapped in a terrible cycle of poverty. Many of them are not thinking of education, a plan for the future," Abisoye Ajayi-Akinfolarin, a computer programmer in Lagos, recalls. But several times a week, girls like Okpoe get a glimpse of another world when they attend GirlsCoding, a free program run by the Pearls Africa Foundation that seeks to educate and excite girls about computer programming. Since 2012, the group has helped more than 400 disadvantaged girls gain the technical skills and confidence they need to transform their lives.
It's the vision of Ajayi-Akinfolarin, who left a successful career to devote herself to this work. She'd noticed how few women worked in this growing field-a 2013 government survey found that less than 8% of Nigerian women were employed in technology jobs. She wanted to fix the gender gap. "Technology is a space that's dominated by men. Why should we leave that to guys?" she said. "I believe girls need opportunities."
Now, dozens of girls aged 10 to 17 get trained in computer programming technology. "I believe you can still find diamonds in these places," Ajayi-Akinfolarin said. "They need to be shown another life. " One way her program does is by taking the students to visit tech companies 一 not only showing them what technology can do, but also helping them visualize themselves joining the industry.
Okpoe, for one, has taken this to heart. She helped create an app called Makoko Fresh that went live this summer, enabling fishermen like her father to sell seafood directly to customers. She even wants to become a software engineer and hopes to study computer science at Harvard. "One thing I want my girls to hold onto is, regardless of where they are coming from, that they can make it," Ajayi said. "They are coders. They are thinkers. Their future is bright. "
