Akira Chix: The merry band of hot female techies

It’s Friday, 10.00 a.m. Crisp morning. I’m in a building in the middle of town, where several techies are in various stages of churning out codes—codes of what may be Kenya’s next big application, perhaps the next M-PESA. This is the haunt of AkiraChix, made up of two ordinary ladies who became world famous BBC personalities in their previous lives. They helped create M-farm, an application that revolutionized how farmers sell their produce in Kenya. AkiraChix are here to bring sexy to the geeky IT world. The two ladies, both It enthusiasts seek to work on projects that seek to make society better. Marie Githinji and Angela Oduor share their experience in the computing field.

Why Akira, did you Google this name?

Marie Githinji: Akira is Japanese for energy and intelligence. Our role is to empower other women with technology.

Since AkiraChix was initiated, have you achieved anything gigantic so far?

Marie Githinji: Well, we won the Unsung Heroes Award and got recognition from the US Embassy. We have been carrying out these training programmes since September 2010, and so far we have trained our students in computer literacy, entrepreneurship skills, web designing and programming courses. We also have a few volunteer tutors like Tosh from the iHub, who teaches web design and Bernard who takes them through Java programming language.

Angela Oduor: What the training does is to breed an all round type of individual ready for the technical and the business market. Its focal point is to bring up an individual who is able to use technology as an enabling arm to drive business.

Away from the classroom trainings, what are the most important things you are working at now and their impacts?

Angela Oduor: Magme is one of our major undertakings, it is an open computer application based on the C++ programming language developed to help visually impaired people read easily from a computer screen. We also have the Infodev project which was recently funded by World Bank to run the social mobile network for m:Lab in a month’s time.

Who funds the group, and do they have any expectation?

Angela Oduor: Apart from the Infodev grant, which we were recently awarded, most of the time we have to chip from our pockets to fund our own small projects.

Let’s talk about your biggest challenge so far…

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