How Ekolance is closing the demand gap for Blockchain professionals in Africa
As of March 2022, only 21% of crypto owners are women, and of the top 12 crypto companies in the world, only 5 are led by women.
Women hardly talk about their finances with families and friends, and this inhibits their ability to learn and venture into new financial markets.
A survey by BlockFi showed that only 9% of women feel they understand cryptocurrency.
Another study conducted by LongHash in 2018 found that among 100 blockchain startups, only 14.5% were female employees, and 7% were managers.
While these numbers are worrying, it is fortunate to know that there are organizations changing this narrative.
These organizations provide educational resources for women to overcome the challenges of financial dependence.
One of the organizations on this stage is Ekolance, an education and recruitment platform that helps professionals from emerging countries, especially women, to start working in Blockchain.
In a chat with the co-founder, Modupe Ativie, we learned how the platform offers structured training for the new blockchain career paths and connects the trained professionals with employers.
A brief background
In 2018 I started trading cryptocurrencies with my husband just as an enthusiast. The same year saw the beginning of the crypto bull market.
Fast forward to 2019, I found out that there was a technology behind cryptocurrencies and this led me to start studying more about blockchain technology.
In 2020 the shutdown happened and that’s when I finally took the time to study more in depth and started to understand more uses for the technology.
This gave me better insight and I finally understood the power of this technology, after that I started networking internationally, trying to find people who knew more about blockchain.
I was so fascinated that I felt everyone should know about blockchain and I started selling affordable blockchain training later that year, I started handling blockchain projects internationally, but I have to state here that I don’t code, but I have access to a team of coders .
Moving on to 2021, I started attending many meetings globally and in many of those meetings I would sometimes be the only woman or even the only black woman. I remember one of the meetings I attended.
Raj Kapoor, the founder of the India blockchain Alliance, mentioned that he, along with some from the Disney Dragon chain, had formed the Global Blockchain Women Alliance and had started promoting it in India.
He asked if I would like to lead the effort in Africa for women, and I gladly accepted the offer, because for me it is about passion for technology, and trying to get more women into the sector.
In 2021 I was also selected for the DLT talent program for women hosted by the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center.
It was an 18-week program where I had the opportunity to network with female developers, entrepreneurs and teachers from all over the world.
For me, education and awareness were still my strongest points, but I also got excited about other things, which emerged as a result of my interaction with other blockchain stakeholders in Nigeria and Africa.
Just to mention, I was excited about eNaira when I first heard about it.
I even wrote an article about it, titled “Nigeria, from Cryptocurrency Ban to CBDC in Nine Months”, I thought eNaira would be a way for the government to be more crypto-friendly, but that was not the case.
Fortunately, people like Mr. Adedeji Owonibi, the founder of the first blockchain hub in Nigeria and bodies like SiBAN (Stakeholders In Blockchain Association of Nigeria) are in talks with the SEC and members of the CBN and we hope for some favorable news soon.
Currently I am involved in more than one project in the blockchain space, I am the co-founder of Ekolance, an amazing training and recruitment platform targeting people from emerging economies.
I am also the African Hub Chair for the Global Blockchain Women Alliance and Vice President of SheFab – the women empowerment arm of the FinTech and blockchain Association. I also sit on several advisory boards in NFTs and FinTech companies.
Women are still few in this area and this basically means that a woman can end up doing a lot, this is why I am trying to get more women informed and aware.
In about five months, since the start, we have a community of over 1,400 people, and the reason this is small is that we reach out to professionals, people who already have some expertise.
These are important as criteria because we want to be able to present them to international companies.
We believe that people can get basic training on their own and then come to us to graduate and focus on specific career paths.
We have separate tutorials for Community Managers, Content Creators, and Solidity Developers, and soon we’ll be including many more courses, including building and offering these programs in Metaverse.
Should we be worried about fewer female developers?
If there are fewer female developers in the blockchain space, is that a problem? I don’t think there is any problem. The only thing is that there will be no balance in the sector.
For the reason of balance alone, I think it is important that more women are involved. We are talking about sustainable development goals, equality and female empowerment, which is why all sectors should be equally represented.
There is a quote by one of my mentors in blockchain, Raj Kapoor, the founder of India Blockchain Alliance and says “it’s the belief and not the ability that makes women and girls think that blockchain is not for them” So it’s not a matter of whether they can handle it or not, it’s just the bias that comes with their gender, that misconception is what boggles their mind.
In our Global Blockchain Women Alliance training sessions, what I start with is a renewal of the mind, to let women know that the technology is global, it is for everyone, and what we intend for women to achieve is the same as everyone man anywhere can achieve.
The technology sector has flourished so far, although there are more men, but I think we will do even better, we will move even faster in technology. If we get more women on the field, the sector will be in balance.
How does Ekolance fulfill its mission?
At Ekolance we do this by offering training programs in the most in-demand blockchain professions, most accessible blockchain training is focused on developers and we have even checked to confirm that Ekolance is the only blockchain training organization focused on emerging countries who train in specific blockchain professions.
We want more women to see these opportunities, and we currently have over 500 women registered as community leaders and content creators in our program.
This is not far-fetched because information about blockchain and cryptocurrency is controlled by social media, which many women are interested in and have a sense of.
In our solidity developer camp, we had about 20% of women in the first cohort, but overall, including our other courses, about 40% of the population is female.
The program is not gender specific, but we have reduced the entry barrier for women and that has helped. For example, we have had more female applications for the role of community manager than men.
Ekolance offers its training for free, what’s the catch?
We consider ourselves an ESG startup, which means we are focused on providing educational and financial inclusion.
The cycle does not end with just training. After we train people, we connect them with global employers, giving them the opportunity to work in high-paying jobs and improve their quality of life.
My dream is to see that a competent woman from an emerging country can earn as much as a competent man from the developed world for the same quality of work.
Now the blockchain space is so demanding that sometimes employers are willing to pay 100% of a developer’s annual salary as a hiring fee, but we don’t charge that much.
Our revenue model is focused on charging the employers, who hire the people we train for free, and maybe sometimes we can get sponsors, who sponsor our training programs, although that hasn’t officially happened yet.
Milestones
The first course we ran was the Solidity Camp. It was a 13-week program, and was just completed at the beginning of August from May when we started.
For the people in the Solidity camp, we had almost 20 matches at work, over 200 people applied and we started the camp with about 60 people. The cohort ended with around 30 people following along until the end.
For our community leaders, we have recently completed a course with them and they are currently being matched with employers. We are also still looking for more open opportunities for them.
How Global Women Alliance and Ekolance work together to bridge the gap?
The Global Blockchain Women Alliance is something I have been doing much longer than Ekolance. I faced the challenges of getting women to believe in the possibility of blockchain technology.
90% of the women in my age group I talk to have negative reservations about blockchain’s most common use case, cryptocurrency, but I found that young ladies are excited about cryptocurrencies and the future.
We wrapped up our first Girls Code Camp for free at the Global Blockchain Women Alliance over the last summer break and it was a success as we had participants between the ages of 8-16 express their excitement and also saw girls aged 8 and 9 present websites they have developed on their own. We are already preparing these young girls for the technology of the future.
By the time these young girls are ready to get jobs as developers, they would have become experts through Ekolance.
The future of blockchain and girls, how do you see these two merging?
At the Global Blockchain Women Alliance, we envision a world where girls feel confident tackling issues using Blockchain at all levels, this is the world we work to create.
If they are confident of taking on any operator in the blockchain space, nothing will stop them or slow them down.
They do not see themselves as inferior because they are girls, nor do they see themselves as lacking abilities.
This is the future we see for them, and we are working towards it.
I choose to see a future where we have more girls, and more women working in the sector, and developing solutions that change the world.
The bottom line
Ekolance starts a program for content creators. Now content is everything in the web3 and blockchain space because the content that is out there is what controls the actions and inactions of investors, traders and everyone else in the sector.
As a content creator, how you represent your brand and how you project it will ultimately affect the success of your brand, product or community.
So we launched a 6-week training program for content creators on September 22nd, and it’s completely free.
Participants in our training program will get to meet experts and potential employers, and do assignments, which is how they begin to build their experience in the blockchain space.
Featured Image: Modupe Ativie, Co-Founder, Ekolance
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