Moniepoint, Google, Techmakers move to bridge Nigeria’s IT skills gap
Moniepoint, Google and Women Techmakers are making moves to bolster talent density and accelerate Nigeria’s digital economy by building IT skills of young Nigerian women. Speaking at Moniepoint’s headquarters in Lagos at a workshop themed “Break the Pattern,” Kemi Nwogu, Head of Product at Moniepoint Inc, said progress for women in technology requires not just […]
Moniepoint, Google and Women Techmakers are making moves to bolster talent density and accelerate Nigeria’s digital economy by building IT skills of young Nigerian women.
Speaking at Moniepoint’s headquarters in Lagos at a workshop themed “Break the Pattern,” Kemi Nwogu, Head of Product at Moniepoint Inc, said progress for women in technology requires not just access to existing structures, but the tools and confidence to reshape them.
Nwogu urged attendees to move beyond traditional career playbooks and take ownership of shaping the industry’s future.
The event was organised in partnership with Women Techmakers Lagos and Google Developer Group (GDG) Lagos with participants spanning both technical and non-technical backgrounds, reflecting the breadth of women currently active across Nigeria’s digital economy.
“From a young age, many girls have been subtly discouraged from pursuing science and tech. They are told sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, that tech is too hard, too technical, or simply not for them. These patterns are not facts, they are constructs. And what has been constructed can be deconstructed! The future of tech needs leaders who build people, not just products, cultures, not just systems,” said Nwogu.
On building skills with purpose, she urged women to “show up every day, make small, steady progress with online courses, coding bootcamps, open-source projects while leveraging the full ecosystem; take on challenging tasks as your greatest classroom using real problems to build real skills; while knowing why you’re building a skill as every learning goal can be tied to a career journey.”
The event went beyond conversations to a hands-on workshop, Prompt to Production, facilitated by Taiwo Famakinde which guided attendees through modern product development from prompt design through rapid prototyping to the deployment of a functional application using AI tools.
A lot of the participants entered with little to no prior experience building software products.
The workshop then fed directly into a Buildathon, where participants developed and deployed their own solutions in real time, with the strongest builds recognised and rewarded at the closing ceremony.
“Our participants left with both the technical confidence to build and the leadership frameworks to navigate their careers on their own terms, ensuring they are no longer just participants in the tech ecosystem, but the architects of its future. They are now ready to test their ideas and lead without waiting for perfect conditions or a full team.” said Funke Olasupo, Co-organizer, Women Techmakers Lagos.
Moniepoint said it had invested in developer community partnerships including its ongoing collaboration with GDG Lagos as well as internal programmes designed to build engineering depth across product domains that include its highly successful Women in Tech initiative, DreamDevs, HatchDev and the government’s acclaimed 3MTT programme.