International Women's Day is celebrated globally every year on March 8 to recognize women's achievements, raise awareness about gender discrimination, and promote gender equality.
The day is also mapped out to celebrate women who have broken the bias and contributed immensely in socio-economic developments, politics, sports, literature, technology, and innovations, among others.
The theme for 2023 International Women's Day is "DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality." It explains that innovation, technological change, and education can be used in the digital age to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Empowering women and girls through technology and innovation is one of the social impacts that motivated the founding of ColdHubs Limited.
The CEO/Founder, Nnaemeka Ikeagwuonu, revealed that while anchoring the Smallholder farmers radio programme, he observed that rural women show commitment and contribute intelligently during field coverage and need to be empowered and supported.
This resulted in his decision to create jobs for rural women in the organization by employing females as hub operators in all the cold rooms across the country.
ColdHubs, as an agritech organization, through its reboost tech activities, promotes the advancement of transformative technology and digital education for rural women, especially farmers and vegetable traders.
The training exposes the women to how to improve their income and sales through digital marketing and how to best assess loans and farming tools from government agencies.
Since its invention, ColdHubs has been providing employment opportunities for women, who tend to seek careers in the tech world.
Let's meet Amarachi Grace Ekebuisi, a graduate of Niger Delta University, Bayelsa State, Nigeria, who studied electrical and electronic engineering at the University of Niger Delta.
She is presently the Regional Electrical Technical Officer in ColdHubs.
Grace is a high-spirited lady, driven by her zeal to strive for more in her career, notwithstanding the biases and perceptions a lot of people have about her profession.
"Every day I wake up and see that I am practicing what I learned in school." "I am motivated to go beyond my career because over the years I have been discouraged from choosing my line of work.
" Sometimes people take a deep breath and look at me twice before they can consider me for a job.
"The experience I had while seeking employment as a female electrician is really depressing." "I cannot share it all." Grace shared.
The young lady is a professional electrical engineer working with the ColdHubs team to provide and develop innovative strategies that will improve the income of farmers and traders, reduce food spoilage and waste, and increase agricultural value chains.
She manages her regions properly and oversees all technical issues that affect any of the cold rooms in the South West, paying more attention to the best of her region and overcoming several challenges that follow her job as a woman.
Grace accepts persistence and perseverance as her watchdogs towards scaling through a career where men are dominated in Nigeria.
In most developing countries, occupations that involve technology and innovation are mostly male-dominated, while women are faced with a lot of challenges, stereotypes, and societal expectations.
Technology is not just tools but the skills and knowledge needed to effectively use the tool.
It is also a tool that assists the learning process with mechanical manipulations of contents.
It is effective in terms of saving time, clarity of contents, simulations, and speedy communication.
Therefore, the world of technology needs women to diversify its purposes of problem solving and development to strike a balance.
That is why ColdHubs is using its workforce to employ women and support women like Grace to see that their dreams are actualized.
We also provide webinar seminar programs for female undergraduates in tech departments, where we discuss with them the need to choose a career in the tech world and assure that the organization is willing to employ qualified and innovative females at the company.