eHealth Africa committed to building stronger health systems in Africa— Director

eHealth Africa (eHA), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), says it is committed towards building stronger health systems in Africa, especially in Nigeria in the area of Information Communication Technology (ICT).

The Executive Director, eHealth Africa, Ms Juliet Odogwu, said Odogwu said that the organisation had been able to train over 200 males and females on technology and software-related skills at different stages of its programmes.

“As an organisation, eHA has more women at its senior management level and it’s working to see a balance in the ratio of women to men at all levels of its workforce. To achieve this, the leadership of the organisation designed some early career programmes to help young female graduates start and build their careers.

“We noticed that in the technology sector specifically, we have very few females, who are willing to develop the skills or even get jobs in technology sector because it is seen as a male dominated field. We want to build that culture in Nigeria and even in the northern Nigeria to be specific to encourage women to see these as vibrant opportunities for them on the long run.

“We want to build the immediate capacity in the environment so we need to be able to see in the next one to two years the number of women in the technology sector increase by at least 30 per cent in the communities where we work,’’ she said.

According to her, one of such initiatives is an all-women cohort of the eHA Academy geared towards helping young women start their careers in software and web development.

She said there was also an all-female paid ”internship cohort” that exposes graduates to the organisation’s values, mission and better prepare them for full-time employment opportunities.

She further said that the organisation was recently certified as one of the best places to work in Nigeria for 2022 by an international organisation called “Best Places to Work’’. The recognition gave the management the drive and motivation to keep raising the bar, she added.