Gender gap: Apify, She Code Africa back women developers with mentorship, funding

By Matthew Johnson

Apify, a global software development platform, has partnered with She Code Africa to increase the participation of Nigerian women in the developer economy, after identifying low female representation among developers using its platform.

Senior Developer Community Manager at Apify, Mr. Sauray Jain, disclosed this during a two-day hybrid hackathon organised in partnership with She Code Africa in Lagos, where women developers showcased technology solutions to real-life challenges.

Jain said the partnership was conceived to create more opportunities for women developers in Nigeria and other African countries to build software, participate actively in the developer economy and monetise their technical skills.

He said the need for the intervention became apparent after Apify recorded strong participation from Nigeria and other African countries in its previous global software-building challenge but noticed that female participation remained low.

According to him, the company was particularly concerned about the gender imbalance among Nigerian developers using its platform and decided to work with women-focused technology communities to address the gap.

He said: “We saw that there are not enough female or women community members who are joining our community and making these software. So this year we made a pledge that we will participate with many women communities all over the world, and especially in Africa. This DEMO is just the first phase.”

Jain explained that the initiative was not only aimed at increasing the number of women participating in software development but also at addressing the gap between the technical capabilities of African developers and their ability to earn income from their skills.

He said the hackathon offered participants an opportunity to develop practical solutions while gaining exposure to tools that could enable them to commercialise their products.

Jain said the competition had three cash prizes of $700, $500 and $300 for the first, second and third winners respectively, while the top 10 participants would receive $100 worth of Apify prepaid platform usage.

He added that entries would be assessed based on technical quality, effective use of the Apify platform, potential impact on local communities, relevance of the solutions and quality of demonstrations.

According to him, Apify would also monitor its developer community in Nigeria and across Africa over the next six months to assess whether the initiative translates into increased female participation.

Also speaking, She Code Africa Community Manager, Mfonobong Umondia, said the hackathon brought together women and girls from different technology tracks to collaborate and develop solutions to real-world challenges.

Umondia said the programme covered areas including fintech and cybersecurity, stressing that the impact of the initiative would extend beyond the competition through mentorship, technical workshops and continued access to resources.

She said the top three teams would receive direct mentorship from the Apify team, while all participants would remain connected through a community where they could continue to receive technical support.

Umondia said the participants demonstrated several locally focused innovations during the hackathon.

Among the solutions was AgriLens Africa, a platform designed to provide real-time agricultural commodity prices and market trends from markets across Nigeria.

Another team developed Lumio, an AI-powered educational application designed to study students’ learning patterns and adapt lessons to their pace, while another team showcased FIX, an AI troubleshooting platform for equipment including generators, inverters, refrigerators, freezers and thermal printers.

She added that participants also demonstrated a job-matching application designed to search official job boards and match available vacancies with users based on their skills, location and preferred work arrangements.

Meanwhile, She Code Africa Community Associate, Oluwaseun Oladeji, said the programme was designed to equip participants with the skills to build, design and monetise Apify Actors.

Oladeji said participants would continue to receive technical support after the hackathon, while winners would have access to additional mentorship sessions aimed at strengthening and improving their products.

“This is not the stoppage for both the winners and other participants. Both Apify and sheCodeAfrica have decided to put them all on a mentorship programs so they won’t lag behind in their career,” Oladeji said.

The organisers said the partnership was designed to move women beyond acquiring technology skills by creating practical pathways for them to develop, deploy and monetise digital products capable of addressing challenges within their communities.

The initiative also underscores the growing emphasis on connecting technical training with opportunities for women to participate meaningfully in Africa’s expanding digital and developer economy.