Ethel Cofie, Ghanaian IT Consultant Selected for President Obama Fellowship

iSpace Foundation is happy to announce Selection of Ethel Cofie  one of its supporters for the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), Washington Fellowship. iSpace is a space for developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and technology lovers to come together in a shared facility and work together.

The Washington Fellowship is the new flagship program of the President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).  This program will bring over 500 young leaders to the United States for leadership training, academic coursework, and mentoring, and will create unique opportunities in Africa to put those new skills to practical use .

As part of the Fellowship Ethel  will be  Interacting with President Obama at a Presidential Summit in Washington DC, Participate in an intensive academic and leadership program at YALE University and meet with U.S. government, civic, and business leaders;

Ethel Cofie  is an IT  and Strategy consultant with a passion to  support businesses in their efforts to provide customers with great service/product, provide excellent customer service and make profit by providing excellent and appropriate technology solutions.

Her experience spans a variety of countries including UK, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone and she has worked on projects like the Bill and Melinda Gates Funded Mobile Technology for Health and Ford Foundation funded election-monitoring project for Nigerian Elections.

After resigning her role as Head of Commercial Solutions at Vodafone, She started her own Company Edel Consultancy which is the vehicle for driving her passion (www.edelitconsult.com ).

She also runs monthly Women in Technology Knowledge sharing series an informal networking group focused on education and enhancing women’s careers

One of the tenets of the YALI Fellowship will be to share lessons learnt with all and Ethel will be doing that by sharing her journey on her website www.yali.ethelcofie.com

She will also be sharing videos of the inspiring stories of the other participants on her Youtube channel and promoting Ghana and Ghanaian businesses with her online presence.

To learn more about this, please contact:

Ethel Cofie

ethel@ethelcofie.com

www.ethelcofie.com

We Hanged Out With The Ladies at Women In Tech Night

Quite recently, a lot of discussion has been going on concerning women empowerment in Tech, especially in Ghana. With the exploits of Tech Needs Girls, and very soon, STEMBees, we are sure young girls in Ghana are off to a great start in the sciences thanks to the great support from the community.

Since January this year, the Women In Tech event has been taking place each month bringing together women, and some men, in tech to deliberate on issues relating to women and their contributions to tech in Ghana.

Yesterday’s event was its first to be held at the AITI-KACE. The discussion centered on e-commerce in Ghana. The night featured 5 reps from the Rocket Internet powerhouse, AIH. Carmudi, Lamudi, EasyTaxi, Kaymu, and Hello Foods represented the e-commerce community in Ghana. Most of the discussions involved their operations in Ghana, and the lessons they have learnt.

For most of these businesses, the almost-nonexistent presence of Ghanaians online made it difficult for them. Other logistical issues like address systems, etc. all came up.

The presence of Google Ghana Manager was felt as she offered some insights into the listings market with respect to her Google Trader experience. The meeting was streamed live, and can be watched on YouTube, any day.

I think a lot more of such events will be helpful to young women who have plans of going into tech in Ghana. We’ll fill you in on subsequent Women In Tech Events to come. To the team behind this initiative, we say Kudos!