The Partnership of EEEI and Early Tech Initiative to Empower Women as Mobile App Developers

Amarachukwu Aguolu - Published August 25, 2026

Under the SheTech initiative sponsored by Engage Empower Educate Initiative (EEEI) of Nigeria, Early Code Institute trained 15 young women in technical and practical skills in Mobile App Development, which paved the way to multiple internship and job opportunities for them.

The main objective of this project was a commitment taken up by Early Code Institute and EEEI to empower women and girls and reverse the gender inequality that exists in access to education, finance, governance, and technology.

The Wide Divide between Women and Tech

From the onset, women in Nigeria have faced deep and wide gender inequality in tech education, enterprise, and innovation in the growing sector of technology. Despite the rapid growth in this industry, women face barriers generated by cultural and societal expectations, lack of exposure to technology, and low foundational empowering beliefs. All of these have deterred them from undertaking a career path in technical skills.

The challenges hinder them from basic computer literacy and access to ICT tools, reduce the rate of academic inclination to ICT and engineering courses, and result in a poor workforce representation.

The Mission Alignment of Early Code and EEEI for Tech Empowerment

Early Code is a training institute with multiple locations in Abuja that specializes in offering tech and coding education through a practical, hands-on process. Since 2019, which is when Early Code was founded, our core mission has been to “make Nigeria a tech-producing nation through world-class technical education”. This mission aims at meeting the increasing technical demands from various industries and ultimately exporting tech skills to other countries of the world, even without the experts leaving the country. You can learn more about our goals and story on our About Us page.

You can see how this aligns 100% with the mission of SheTech, an initiative of EEEI, which is to “place women and girls on the pedestal of global competition in the tech world, an achievement that will make them sought after in the industry and enhance their livelihoods”.

The aim to provide a successful tech career, aligned with the key mission for the women and girls who applied for this program, was achieved.

The group recognized that mobile technology is another driver of the internet and an increasing revenue generator for digital enterprises across Africa, which led to the deliberate choice of Mobile App Development.

The EEEI group received applications from 200 Nigerian ladies for the free training, but only 15 were carefully selected to take the Mobile App Development programme.

In partnership with Early Code Ltd, a high-impact learning environment was achieved through hands-on training and mentoring in core and industrial modules.

The Mobile App Development Skill Training for SheTech

The Mobile App Development program is one of Early Code Institute's core coding programs, and so there was no difficulty in delivering the training for SheTech. Explore our full range of training tracks on our Courses page. The program was built to take beginners who have little to no knowledge of coding seamlessly from the basic to advanced concepts in mobile software engineering. The duration of the training was 4 months, and this was more than enough to deliver practical training and mentorship through a structured learning process.

Key components of the training involved the following:

• Core Curriculum: The young women were taken on the mastery of the core programming language for Mobile Development, which is JavaScript, and then they moved to the mastery of the framework, React Native, which allows developers to build functionalities for Android and iOS software in one codebase. Other concepts include UI/UX best practices for displaying components on mobile screens, API integration, and database integration and management with Firebase.
• Hands-on activities: The core part of the training that ensured effective skill acquisition was live coding sessions. Rather than relying only on lectures, the students follow the instructor's coding, learn how to solve and troubleshoot errors, and push code to repositories and support team collaboration on GitHub.
• Capstone projects: The training was cumulative and monitored through capstone projects that showed the technical and innovative capabilities of these women in the development of mobile applications that address and solve a real-world problem. This gave the students the opportunity to gather experience and put together their portfolio for prospective employment.

After the components were achieved within the 4 months of training, they were issued certificates to attest their proficiency in the skill learnt and successful completion of Mobile Development.

Sustainable success through Post-training programmes

This tech empowerment did not end after graduation. The Engage Empower Initiative (EEEI) group knew that exposure in the tech-world environment plays a pivotal role in building real experience in mobile development for these exclusive target beneficiaries, young women. They also needed to close the gap between training and employment.

With the complete success of the technical training in Mobile Development, the trainees were provided with a structured post-training program by the Nigerian Air Force in Abuja for a month. After this post-program, they were also secured an internship with Interswitch Nigeria, a digital platform for online payments and transactions, for another month.

The trainees during the post-training program and internship placement were:

• Matched actively with these tech companies to give them vital exposure to corporate and practical experience.
• Given access to Early Code's resources to foster continuous learning to keep their practical skill sharp and on point.
• Paired with senior industry professionals who offered their expert guidance in their newfound career, interview preparation for job opportunities, and support needed to thrive in the industry, normally dominated by the male gender, with ease.

Beyond all these were testimonials of trainees who obtained job opportunities with this skill. A particular trainee secured a job in one of the popular banks in Nigeria in Lagos.

This truly attested to the goal and mission to end hunger, poverty and elevate the girl child education achieved by EEEI in partnership with Early Code.

With the role of structured education by Early Code, the EEEI group program had achieved its SheTech mission, objectives, outcomes, and impact for the 15 young women selected for the Mobile Development training.

Early Code has played critical educative and empowerment roles in other partnered and personal initiatives, such as Creative Media Production training sponsored by IDEAS-TVET, A Digital Skill Acquisition Training for Youth in Churches, TEAM (Tech Empowerment and Mentorship), and so many others. For university students seeking industrial exposure, check our SIWES and IT placement opportunities. If you have questions regarding our training programs or partnerships, visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.

The passion to coach, train, and empower individuals through digital and tech skills needed to excel has always been the mission of Early Code. The focus is more on practical skills to ensure our learners and trainees are well equipped, proficient in their chosen paths, and to create sufficient software developers and tech talents in Nigeria and other African countries.