The Bayelsa State government has identified digital entrepreneurship as one of the veritable skills that the girl-child can be equipped with for a better life and the growth of the society.

The Commissioner for Education, Gentle Emelah, disclosed this during his remarks at the commencement of a free three-month technology training programme (technovation) with a special focus on “digital entrepreneurship” for 100 girls from the Model Secondary Schools in the state on Saturday.

The programme is jointly organized in Yenagoa by the state’s Education Development Trust Fund (EDTF) and the Odyssey Educational Foundation, an Abuja-based non-governmental organization.

Emelah said the programme was part of the state government’s human capital development policy, noting that girls were faced with a lot of societal challenges which had limited their social advancement.

He explained that exposing secondary school female students to digital entrepreneurship skills would help them to be self-reliant and also assist those that might proceed to tertiary education to become better graduates.

Emelah, who declared the training open, said: “So what we are doing is to educate our school girls with skills that could make them self-reliant at the end of their secondary programme; at whatever level of education they find themselves, be it in secondary or tertiary, that upon graduation they should be able to contribute to the economy and be employers of labour.

“That is what we are trying to do so that we can be able to minimize social vices in the future and take away violence from our streets, and I believe that that is the best way to go.”

While encouraging the students to maximize the opportunities offered by technology and digital entrepreneurship, the commissioner said the government was hopeful that “if 80 out of the 100 girls are impacted with something handy, they can equally impact the society.”

Also speaking, the Executive Secretary of the EDTF, Alice Atuwo, stated that the technology training was “a girls’ empowerment programme”, stressing that its benefits were huge and life-changing.

Addressing the participants, she said, “The benefits of this programme are enormous. Participating in a technovation programme like this would arouse your interest in technology and leadership. A greater percentage of you the beneficiaries will enroll in more computer-related courses in your schools.

“Others can go on to develop business plans which you can present at business events, meet with world business leaders and eventually start your businesses. You can also go on to support the next cohorts of technovation girls in return. The end result is that technovation changes girls/students’ lives for good and the society is better for it.”

Atuwo recalled that the EDTF had in October 2022 organised a summer camping programme where 103 students in SS1 and SS2, made up of boys and girls from the model secondary schools, were trained in coding and robotics.

She urged the girls to take the training seriously in order not to miss the opportunity to become self-sufficient for themselves and their families.

The Programme Director of Odyssey Educational Foundation, Stella Uzochukwu-Denis, said that one of the major aims of the training was to ensure that “more girls get into the stream of technology.”

According to her, the beneficiaries would be able to develop and deploy relevant apps to solve problems peculiar to their socio-economic environment and help themselves better.