Yielding Accomplished African Women is a non-profit organization on an ambitious mission. They aim to bridge the gender economic gap in Africa by providing a college to career pipeline for young African women. They are building the largest community of African female technologists and financial analysts for the continent. Yaa W. has created Africa’s first professional STEM sorority. In 2019, they hosted Africa's first and only Women In Machine Learning Conference that trained a 100 young women from all over Africa in foundational skills and knowledge in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. They also had yoga sessions, personal development sessions and community development sessions. Their flagship program, which has been run annually since the organization's inception is dubbed "Our Girls Our Future". This is a career accelerator program that trains cohorts of ladies in tech and finance streams through a series of classes, assignments, seminars, interviews and internships. At the end of the intensive training, the ladies are equipped with a gender-specific professional toolkit encompassing skills in personal branding, professional etiquette, MS Office, financial markets and analysis, macro/microeconomics, product design, programming skills, software development life cycle amongst others. They’re also bolstered with a solid network of influential female professionals. They are then matched to top tech and finance companies for internships and jobs.

Our Girls Our Future had been run as an in-person training till the COVID-19 pandemic hit. YAA.W has been able to move their training online, despite the various time zones across Africa, with the use of Online Challenges eg. "Think for the Future" which rewarded the winning ladies with up to $1000 dollars cash prizes, career and mentorship support. They also organized daily "Eureka Moments" quizzes where winners received Internet data bundles for continued access to the online programs.

http://www.accomplishedafricanwomen.org

• Ghana
• Kenya
• Mauritius
• Malawi
• Nigeria
• South Africa
• Uganda
• United Republic of Tanzania

• Youth
• Women

The project has a replicable model and in this year it is held online.

This year's Our Girls Our Future is entirely online and free, with training via series of webinars, online video classes, mock interviews, course assignments and projects. The participants communicate with one another via the Slack Channels as well.

This project empowers women in technology and finance. By training women and girls it empowers them to start and/or accelerate their careers.