There it was: the Women in Tech November 2025 African Edition, featuring the 45 most influential women in digital transformation (2024–2025). I felt a quiet flash of pride looking at this tapestry of trailblazers on the cover: women from different generations, backgrounds, and countries across Africa. I saw hijabs, braids, locs, straight hair, wide smiles, and serious expressions, identity in all its feminine forms. It felt like a visual cue of what representation truly looks like.
I saw diversity.
I saw belonging.
I saw a paradigm shift in the industry, one that I am a beneficiary of.
I often think of the first generation of Women in Tech, those who entered spaces not built with them in mind. Like the brilliant women portrayed in the movie Hidden Figures, they were expected to be exceptional to be accepted, resilient to remain, and strategic about how visible they needed to be in spaces that often questioned their presence. Their experiences laid the foundation for the confidence embodied in the phrase girls can code; a confidence that traces back to trailblazers like Ada Lovelace in the 1840s, widely regarded as the world’s first programmer. Long before the tech industry existed as we know it, women were already shaping its earliest ideas.
Alongside technical growth and representation the women-in-tech space has been shaped with a strong sense of community. Spaces where ideas are welcomed, solutions built, technical know-how celebrated, and bugs solved amid laughter, perhaps over tea and snacks. In these spaces, confidence became the standard rather than the exception. They are not just social circles, but collective movements rooted in mentorship, shared knowledge, and the belief that progress is something we build together.
And now, we are witnessing a shift: The Tech Girlie Era.
The Tech Girlie generation stepped into an already softened space — not defined by pink keyboards or aesthetics, but by confidence, belonging, creativity, and a strong problem-solving mindset. From product designers and software engineers to UI/UX designers, business analysts, data experts, and those advancing into machine learning and AI, the Tech Girlie has been an integral part of cross-functional teams that treat diversity as strategy rather than compliance. They are not simply taking up space; they are shaping outcomes.
The Tech Girlie reclaimed softness as strength. She is the developer who builds intuitive interfaces with empathy, the analyst who transforms data into inclusive narratives, and the designer who prioritizes accessibility from concept to prototype. She is logical and intuitive. She codes and cares; a powerful reminder that femininity and technical brilliance are not mutually exclusive.
This era no longer feels borrowed, it is owned. And perhaps that is the quiet shift: presence without permission!
We build here.
We lead here.
We belong.
I once heard: “The most powerful women in the room are the ones reminding other women they belong there.”
To the women of yesteryears — thank you, for the yeses and the nos that carved the path that got us here.
