Malawi Girls Can Code Too — AI, Robotics and Digital Literacy Bootcamps for Rural Young Women

The Malawi Girls Can Code Too (MGCC2) project, implemented by UN Women Malawi with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Gender and Local Government, and funded by the Embassy of Ireland, ran three residential bootcamps in the districts of Dowa, Mzimba (Mzuzu) and in the southern region at the Malawi University of Science and Technology between April and July 2024.

A total of 122 girls and young women took part: 27 in Dowa, 45 in Mzuzu and 50 in the southern-region cohort. Participants were trained in coding, robotics, AI-platform creation, the internet of things, mobile-app development, website development, digital literacy, graphic design and entrepreneurship. Facilitator Precious Msonda and UN Women staff reported that participants left with working mobile apps and digital prototypes; 22-year-old Ivy Gondwe and 23-year-old Grace Manda are quoted describing the shift from believing coding was out of reach to building their own apps.

UN Women cites national context statistics to motivate the programme: men in Malawi are roughly three times more likely than women to have basic computer skills (7% vs 2%), only around 25% of the country's researchers are women, and an estimated 90% of future African jobs will require ICT-related skills.

The evidence here is programme-reported rather than independently evaluated: there is no published pre/post skills assessment, control group or longitudinal employment tracking, and outcomes rely on organiser counts and participant testimonials rather than third-party verification. The programme's continuation depends on renewed donor (Irish Embassy) funding beyond its 2026 target horizon.

Read the full analysis: https://africa.unwomen.org/en/stories/news/2024/09/empowering-the-next-generation-the-impact-of-malawi-girls-can-code-too-boot-camps