When a collective of women computer programmers in Kenya needed a name for their ladies-only club, they took their inspiration from a Japanese cult film.
"So Akira is a Japanese word. It means energy and intelligence. And we are energetic and intelligent chicks," says Judith Owigar, the president of Akirachix.
A group like Akirachix would have been unthinkable even five years ago. But Kenya is making a big push toward IT — part of a plan to create a middle-class country by the year 2030.
Kenya has laid hundreds of miles of fiber optic cable. Google and IBM set up shop here. The city even has plans for a $7 billion technology hub just outside the capital Nairobi.
But you need more than tech giants and broadband and even money to launch a local tech industry. You also need a culture of computer geeks. That's where Owigar and her collective Akirachix comes in. They want to make sure that the girl geeks are encouraged as much as the guys.
Bridging The Gender Gap
"You know you're the oddball just because of your gender," Owigar says.
It turns out that in Kenya, exactly as in Silicon Valley, the problem with getting more women in tech is that there aren't more women in tech.
"There are probably other women in tech who are alone, and they think they're the weird ones, but if enough of us meet together, you know, it won't be so weird anymore," Owigar says.
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