Technopreneur and Computer Science student Samantha Gama is off to the United States of America to participate in the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders (YALI).
She says the initiative, in its second year, is “a well of unlimited opportunities from where she hopes to link up with great minds and learn how they create sustainable development in their countries.”
During her six-week fellowship at the University of Texas in Austin the computer science student says she “plans on visiting the Austin Technology Incubator to learn more about how they help startups compete successfully in the capital markets and also achieve business success.”
Samantha also plans on “visiting the prestigious award winning Computer Science Department at the University to acquire knowledge on how they operate focusing in particular, their research projects while engaging with Austin’s entrepreneurial community to make long term business relations with their tech-houses.”
Samantha is currently the community manager at Sky-hub which is a hardware centric technology and innovation hub based in Bulawayo Zimbabwe. Samantha’s vision is to empower women through technology to bring real change in the community. She co-founded a women led start-up called SheCodes that strives to innovate, inspire and educate through technology. SheCodes is involved in running workshops and also facilitates training for a KidsCode program that teaches young children to be digital creators, developers, designers and programmers. Samantha also volunteers weekly at the Technovation challenge as a mentor and is a coach to the girl teams that work on developing android applications that solve problems in their communities.
Her work at Technovation has fused with her passion in the health delivery system in Southern Africa to an extent where she has created C_Casualty, an award winning start-up that is working on digitalising the medical records system allowing roaming patients to take their full “medical history” with them where ever they go on their mobile devices. She hopes to take the initiative beyond Zimbabwe although she knows time is not on her side.
Upon her return from the fellowship, Samantha has lots of plans that include disseminating the knowledge acquired, fostering and developing innovative technology solutions that solve problems faced in my community, mentoring, educating and motivating women innovators and problem solvers, assisting in women-led tech startups especially those from secondary schools and extending C_casualty to rural areas.
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Samantha is in the final year of her Computer Science Degree at the National University of Science and Technology. You can follow her MWF experience at @ss_gama
