Thank you for donating to Women in Tech Africa Projects . We Appreciate you help in supporting the growth of girls/women in STEM Careers. Thank You June 22nd, 2015ethelcofie
Chapter Head Service Commitment Agreement
I will adhere and apply the values of Women in Tech Africa: Opportunity Creation, Networking, Leadership, Integrity, Action and Services
As an Chapter Head of Women in Tech Africa I pledge to take action in the thematic areas
Rally: communicate and Mobilize Communicate about Women in Tech Africa within my circle of influence. Mobilize support for Women in Tech Africa ’s activities organized in my country or areas of expertise by ensuring that vision Women in Tech Africa is implemented.
Adhesion Support the values and objectives of Women in Tech Africa and promote our the vision and objectives. Resource mobilization Mobilize my network, source financial and technical support and/or endorsement of Women in Tech Africa by credible institutions.
Execution of Women in Tech Africa vision Take part in the initiatives launched by Women in Tech Africa and promote the recommendations proposed in Women in Tech Africa vision to relevant stakeholders. Teamwork Work closely with other members. Contribute in Women in Tech Africa country chapters or tasks forces of my choice. Actively communicate, collaborate and coordinate the task force locally or regionally by contributing to specific local initiative and/or regional pillar. Initiative Be a self-starter: undertake actions that fit within the organization’s spheres of influence.
Mentorship Provide guidance, leadership continuity and renewal.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS: Members who pledge will have to report to the Founding team of Women in Tech Africa. The Founding Committee of Women in Tech Africa reserves the right to suspend or terminate the membership of any member that has not complied with the provisions of these pledges.
I hereby undertake to serve as an Chapter Head of Women in Tech Africa and pledge to carry out my duties and obligations as an Chapter Head in a trustworthy and diligent manner and to the best of my abilities. I understand the seriousness of undertaking to be Women in Tech Africa Chapter Head.
I have reviewed and accept the agreements stated above.
Junior Business Analyst Overview We are looking for a motivated and enthusiastic individual to join the Product Development Team as a Junior BA. This key role will play a crucial part in helping the Product Development Team successfully deliver projects. It is intended that the successful candidate will be keen to develop and progress towards a full Business Analyst role within the Product Development Team with increased responsibilities.
Responsibilities Learning about the Business Analyst role and the Project Lifecycle, and practically applying knowledge and skills as obtained to successfully deliver projects • Supporting the Business Analysis function in the Product Development Team and assisting the Business Analysts in: o Eliciting and documenting the business requirements o Chasing-up approvals and managing effective feedback o Updating documents where necessary • Running workshops: Arranging sessions o Determining agendas and preparing any necessary workshop material o Taking notes / meeting minutes o Providing updates and follow-ups to attendees • Supporting and updating multiple Project Logs • Plan, manage and be responsible for own time management according to Product Development priorities - Planning and working flexibly to a deadline • Managing the Product Development Document library • Providing updates and feedback across the Product Development team as required • Attending Scrums and other key Project Management forums • Managing small Projects to delivery (with support from existing Business Analysts) • Supporting test cycles particularly User Acceptance Testing (UAT) • Providing training • Identifying areas for improvement • Critically evaluating information gathered from multiple sources, reconciling conflicts, decomposing high-level information into details, abstracting up from low-level information to a general understanding, and distinguishing user requests from the underlying true needs • Developing requirements specifications according to standard templates • Writing documentation • L1 support as and when required • Being a liaison between the business units, technology teams, support teams and
Business Analysis Qualifications To be successful for this role you will need to keep up to date with technical and industry sector developments and awareness of evolvement of relevant technologies such as HTML5 vs. Flash, Local vs. cloud etc.
You will have previous experience of working in Agile environments (SCRUM experience is an added advantage)
Once you have established yourself, it is intended that you would want to ultimately progress to a Business Analyst position and will therefore demonstrate the following skills:
• Self-motivated and proactive Able to think logical and objectively with the ability to think outside of the box and therefore see the bigger picture Comfortable working under pressure and successfully engage in multiple initiatives simultaneously
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills Results driven with good time management skills Good leadership skills in order to obtain appropriate information and to arrange and co-ordinate projects
Possess a high attention to detail Able to work outside Accra for extended periods of time
Women in Technology Africa is a network in Africa and the Diaspora with the mandate to effective support to women in technology across the African continent and abroad to :
- Creating today’s female leaders and role Models for tomorrow’s Women
- Show the world what a strong African woman is capable of achieving
- Support African growth through technology
Women in Tech Africa has membership of women in over 30 countries in Africa and is launching offices in South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Canada in addition to Ghana by December 2015
Services
Corporate and Non Profit Organizations
Event organization
With our experience of organizing events and programs across Africa and Europe including Ghana, Nigeria and London we are well placed to organize events for your on the thematic women leadership and Africa and Technology
Female Corporate Leadership and Pipeline Programs
We have experience in designing leadership training programs ,we will work with your needs to design a leadership program to support your high performing employees and also consult on the plans for creating pipelines of female leaders for diversity in your Board rooms and Management Level
Professionals and Entrepreneurs
Professional Executive Coaching
Just starting out, do you need early career coaching? We can help.
Do you have a pending Interview you need to get ready for ? We can help coach you in readiness.
Or have you clinched that dream job and you are negotiating your salary package? We can help you negotiate a better package,we will research and prepare you for effective negotiation.
We help women to drive their careers successfully whilst playing to their strengths and remaining true to their authentic selves.Whether it’s to grow in their leadership role, develop as a board member or partner, dedicated executive coaching is a 'must have' for busy female leaders.
Exclusive Deep Dive Dinners
Every 6 weeks we will conduct exclusive invite only dinners with high ranking and high potential individuals. Invitees will be required to pay to attend.
The dinners are small intimate affairs to allow with interaction each other but more importantly with high ranking Chairperson (Our Chairpersons range from CEO’s of top organizations across Africa, Heads of Boards and Celebrity Entrepreneurs with high net worth organizations.
The Dinner Chairpersons will also share with you their personal journey and real-world experiences on business along with answering pertinent questions.
Entrepreneur Business Coaching
Want to start a new business?
Start-up business coaches offer much-needed support, guidance and expertise for new entrepreneurs looking to start a business. Start-ups are notoriously risky - about half fail within the first three years due to misjudged markets, overestimated forecasts, underestimated liabilities and so on - all easy mistakes to make for a first-timer. With an experienced business coaches like us on-board, those fatal mistakes could be seriously minimized.
Been an Entrepreneur for a while?
Is your business highly profitable? Does it tick along smoothly without you? Or are you trapped at the subsistence phase? – your time spent juggling the day to day administrative routines, managing staff, making sure products and services are delivered adequately, managing cash flow and general fire-fighting, etc.Our program is designed to help you build a sustainable, profitable business that can run without requiring your daily attention.
Online Reputation Design and Strategy
We will help you and your businesses plan and manage your professional reputation. Using a blend of:
- Thought Leadership
- Speaking Opportunities
- Social Media
- Networking Planning
We help them develop powerful positive reputations that also bring positive results to your career.
Need our services, please email us at ethel.cofie@womenintechafrica.com
[Spider_Calendar id=”1″ theme=”13″ default=”list” select=”list,”] Women in Tech Africa Events June 13th, 2015ethelcofie
Are your current revenue streams plateauing? Are you looking to build additional revenue streams Have you reached highest revenue limits with your current clients looking to build an additional revenue stream?
In a world full of continuing business uncertainty and tough economic challenges, what would you give for a predictable, growing revenue stream that creates loyal customers and helps sell product?
Are you a Business looking to bring your business into the Digital Era?
Do you want to digitize your services to provide increased and additional revenue stream?
If any of these questions keep you up at night as a business owner or CEO then talk to us as Edel Technology Consulting.
EDEL Technology Consulting was built on the tenet: organizations all over the world need to align strategy and technology to ensure that they survive, innovate and beat their competition.
Let us a give you a quick example
Case Study
Setting the Scene
A legal firm (RF and Partners) have being in business for the last 10 years. They serve small to medium size companies and have being successful so far. RF and Partners have noticed that they have stagnated in terms of profits and unless a the company strategically transforms itself and come up with innovative products, the RF and Partners might be gradually heading to closure as they might not be able maintain the current cost of running the firm – an indication from their financial projections..
EDEL Technology Consulting is contracted to bring synergies in strategy and technology to enable RF and Partners’ growth.
Phase 1
Strategy and alignment meeting
EDEL Technology Consulting’s initially setup strategy sessions with the RF and Partners’ team to understand their business and by so doing establish key points:
Unmet needs of customer
What strategies to employ to address them
The evolution of the market or industry, and strategies to adopt to remain relevant to industry evolutions
These questions help define strategies and direction of RF and Partners and how EDEL Technology Consulting can align technology to new revenue channels, revised products or redefinition of business models.
Phase 2
Design Workshop
Design thinking process first defines the problem and then implements the solutions, always with the needs of the user demographic at the core of concept development. This process focuses on need finding, understanding, creating, thinking, and doing. At the core of this process is a bias towards action and creation: by creating and testing something, you can continue to learn and improve upon your initial ideas.
In the Design thinking workshop a problem space emerged
Problem Space
There was class of SME’s that RF & Partners were not serving and these were startups and individuals who need quick simple legal services without having to pay huge retainer fees.
Worldwide, there are about 300 million persons trying to start about 150 million businesses. About one third will be launched, so you can assume 50 million new firm births per year. Or about 137,000 per day. As firm birth and death rates are about equal, the same number of active firms, say 120,000 probably terminate trading each day--world wide
These startups cannot afford the high legal fees or retention costs charged by the traditional firms, but are still in need of legal services
There were a large number of solution s to offer services to these client in way the was price sensitive and yet provided RF and Partners good margins.
Solution One
On demand Online Platform in which startups would enter and answer a number of questions and a set of tailored documents would be generated automatically. There would be little human intervention and startup would be able to access template legal documents at on demand price.
We create a prototype to test viability of product (minimum viable product for testing without actually building out the whole platform?)
- We quickly put together a one page Google form. ( it takes 10 minutes to create)
- In the Form we included a mobile money number to which amount was to be paid (clients base is in the emerging markets where mobile money is prevalent)
- On receipt of payment paralegal with supervision of second year lawyer would compile legal document startup needs to preset template
We market the product through online mediums
(We increases cost by 10% each week and document volume of sales at each price point- This is to find the maximum price at which clients will pay for the service). Edel Technology Consulting runs the product experiment for a month.
How do we test this product and what are the Key success factors
The Key Success factors here was the volume of sales and how many people clicked to view the of the Google forms
Solution Two
On demand service in which organization who can request, an online conference with a legal practitioner and pay for a set time .In that time legal practitioner and can review and give advice. The user can pay based on experience and seniority of legal practioner.
How do we create a prototype (minimum viable product for testing without actually building out the whole platform)
- We create a landing page for users to request the service ( request can be done via landing page or the via email)
- The user can pay for service using mobile money ( clients base is in the emerging markets where mobile money is prevalent)
- On receipt of payment paralegal schedules a Skype call with user for the time paid for with Lawyer
We market the product through online/sms marketing
(We increases cost by 10% each week and document volume of sales at each price point- This is to find the maximum price at which clients will pay for the service). Edel Technology Consulting runs the product experiment for a month.
How do we test this product and what are the Key success factors
The Key Success factors here was the volume of sales and how many people clicked to view the of the Google forms
At the end of the month the revenue generated and feedback from client who bought the service is used to make the decision on digital product to build for RF & Partners.
- We build Digital Product
- Create Product go to market strategy
- Choreograph product launch
EDEL Technology Consulting has provided RF Partners a digitized service that will increase revenue flow year on year 20%.
We would love to bring these expertise to your organisation , please contact us at services@edelitconsult.com
I trace my interest in technology to a childhood passion. My passion came from a place of insight and simplicity. I used to scoff and cringe during my High School years on hearing that there are not enough women in technology. Much in my current life has been shaped by my younger years; a gradually developed interest that has in a long run influenced me in a good way.
Alongside being a technology enthusiast, I am a writer. I am doing lots of poetry to be a better engineer one time. I find writing and programming similar in the sense that they both involve lone time trying to create something interesting. Their brevity and hidden meaning and all make me know myself better. That inward energy gives me a great feeling of accomplishment.
I derive most of my energy from being surrounded by people. Meeting incredible people has made me view life through a hue and tint of imagination. It is through these tech gatherings that I have managed to answer my endless questions to satisfy my curiosity. I am now conscious that technology was meant for me. There is no mechanical way of learning other than the golden chance of brushing shoulders with people and talking to them. To me, actualizing a dream begins with talking. I have talked to many women I have met and we have shared our interests, what the world lacks, happenings that affect us in a way.
I admire women who have influenced a change in the technology world from afar. I dream of being there too someday. The world is crying out for more women who can venture in technology, and I want to be one of the women who can elbow their way out of patriarchy to silence the cry.
Bio
“Achieng’ Emily is a Kenyan technology lover and writer. She loves watching stars at night. And better still, looks at them more than most people do. ”I chose a career in Technology because I just didn’t know what I wanted to do in life but I was confident I would do well as I’m a strong believer of the saying “Anything worth doing is worth doing well”.
As an IT student, I decided to take a part time job in an SEO company and specialized in Link Building and Search Engine Optimization without having a clue about it. I just knew I was going to be helping my company make millions of dollars online. I put my mind into it and eventually understood the complete basics of Web Marketing (Search Engine Optimization, Link Building and Online Marketing).
This experience opened doors of opportunity into the Online World where I got my first International Job via the Internet as a Web Marketing Analyst. My goal was simple – To Capture Online Users looking to visit China for the Summer Games in 2008.
With my Digital Marketing experience in China, I developed a career in Hospitality Digital Marketing for one of the best hospitality giants in the World and as I continue to evolve, I have gone further to achieve a Masters in Marketing to really understand how core fundamentals of Marketing combine with Core Digital and Information Technology to drive a business forward.
My Career Dream is to be best that I can in any field using my foundational IT skills to improve in everything I do. I am currently looking to take a course in General Leadership Management to integrate Technology into a business. We can’t run away from Technology in fact with the rate at which Technology is fast evolving, it has become fundamental to any business today. I am passionate about Technology as it has shown me how much of an impact it can be in one’s personal life and business today.
Image Source: http://sorianomedia.com/infographic-digital-marketing/
Lola Banjo
Lola Banjo is a seasoned Digital and Marketing Expert in the Hospitality, Travel & Leisure space.
Over 10 years’ experience across Asia, Middle East & Africa
Connect with Me on Linked In. https://ae.linkedin.com/in/lbanjo
I chose a career in tech because I love to be dynamic and to move with current trend of business. Technology does the same and automatically suits my personality-the evolver! With technology, I can experiment and find solutions. I have worked in various sectors but the technology aspect of it all is what gave me the kick.
My dream has always been to use technology to bring a positive impact to the community and businesses.
My area of focus is in ICT & Telecoms Consulting. In Africa, the mobile phone remains a powerful tool, so I like to use technology and tie it around the mobile phone to find solutions through Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and incorporating Cloud Computing to come up with Cloud-based solutions.
My journey into tech started after pursuing an MSc E-Business in 2001 in the UK when doing business on the internet was foreign in many parts of Africa, but I am glad to see ICT being embraced in businesses today in Africa.
I always wanted to start my own business since I want to drive things my way, so I founded GlobalX Investments Ltd in late 2012 after working with Ericsson, a telecommunications giant, in a Strategic Planning role covering 43 countries in Sub Saharan Africa. I hope to grow my business in Cloud-based Technologies through viable partnerships and innovation. My company, GlobalX has recently partnered with VMware as a Solution Provider. In line with this offer, VMware hosted me for my TechWomen Fellowship in the Silicon Valley in October 2014.
I worked on a mentorship project on Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) for Telco’s during my stint at VMware since I wanted to know more about new trends in Cloud Computing and Telecommunications. Photo:Sylvia visiting the Microsoft Offices in Mountain View, Silicon Valley as part of TechWomen.
My journey so far has been challenging in terms of defining a business model and interesting since I have been trying many new things to shape my model. I keep reinventing my business model to reflect and incorporate emerging technologies. I have been pursuing and upgrading accreditation related to my areas of interest/focus to remain relevant and meet market requirements. I keep abreast with new technological trends through avid reading, networking, attending webinars and through social media. My tech dreams are valid, and so are yours. I will keep going.
Sylvia is a ‘’Techpreneur’’ (Entrepreneur in Technology) based in Nairobi, Kenya. She is a TechWomen Alumni, an Initiative of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, selected as an Emerging leader from Africa & the Middle East. She is passionate about empowering girls in STEM. Sylvia also runs an online travel portal dial-a-safari.com. www.globalxinvestmentsltd.com www.dial-a-safari.com sylviamukasa@globalxinvestmentsltd.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylviamukasa