I was expecting extreme heat, extreme poverty and extreme landscapes but I was not expecting a fashion show. But then Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya has endless capacity to surprise and amaze its visitors. I was one of those visitors last week when I accompanied my friend, Lady Mariéme Jamme, to the camp to see the work she does there with iamthecode. She founded this charity to help 1m refugee girls learn to code by 2030 and I am one of the organisation’s patrons.
Kakuma is in a very remote location between South Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia. It was established in the 1990s as a place where the so-called ‘Lost Boys’ of the Sudanese war could be given shelter. However it has grown and grown over the last three decades and is now home to over 300,000 people of whom 50% are under 25. There are 107 UN schools so only a fraction of children are in education.
iamthecode is founded on the premise that access to and understanding of digital technology is one very tangible action that can help even the most vulnerable and complex communities. Lady Marieme empowers refugee girls by delivering the connectivity, content and capacity to learn multiple subjects including coding.
The work appeals to me for two reasons. Firstly, I have long tried to champion the importance of enabling everyone to afford, use and understand the internet. I was UK digital champion from 2009 to 2014, working with two different shades of government. I tried to build the case that it is not acceptable to leave anyone behind. Imagine being one of the 1m people who are not in work and not online when 99% of new jobs are only advertised online? Or imagine missing out on savings of up to £143 on your energy bills when you are in the lowest socioeconomic groups? I didn't do a particularly effective job because the numbers are still very bad in the uk - over 5m adults with no digital skills, millions more with very limited understanding equating to billions of lost revenue to the country.
Secondly, as a woman who has had her entire life transformed by technology, it feels important to try and use my voice to fight for opportunities for others. I can’t code. I used to keep a book of Java programming languages on my desk at lastminute.com, just to keep the tech team on their toes. But, we need talent globally within the sector and it is essential women and girls are a bigger part of the digital workforce of tomorrow than they have been to date. Current studies show we will never reach parity,because as a percentage of the technology sector, women are not even flatlining - they are going backwards.
A refugee camp though? Really? Wasn’t this a mission too far? Even for the extraordinary Lady Marieme. But as I found out, this is exactly the right project and in exactly the right place. What did I learn?
Firstly, access to quality digital technology really does change lives. In a place where hope can be in short supply, the bi-products of learning how to use and even programme software are immense. Teachers told me how girls had gained in confidence, become more connected not only to each other but the wider world and some of them had become very good engineers. It was quite something to hear about the cyber security courses they had completed or see their enthusiasm to showcase code they had just written.
Secondly, this work is hard and needs support. Iamthecode is aiming to scale and scale fast but there is no shortcut to the detailed negotiations that have to take place within every school and between all the relevant aid agencies, government departments and suppliers. Seeing the incredibly careful communication that the charity performs between all these pieces reminded me of stories from Camfed, where I was also Patron, in its early years. Now the gold standard for helping girls into education and then work, Camfed started at a very local level negotiating with individual chieftains to get permission for girls to attend school.
I am clearly not a development expert, so I am not going to do an amateur unpick of the macro challenges of 100m refugees around the world - how they are processed, handled and how they interrelate with their “host community”. Suffice to say, this is a largely unseen problem in the UK but it will only grow over the next decade as more and more climate turmoil sets in. We all need to face this fact. Just three years ago Kakuma was surrounded by a huge river, it is now dry. Nearly every girl I chatted to mentioned the climate crisis and how they wanted to become an ‘activist’. We are dislocated from this reality in Western Europe.
I was apprehensive about my trip. I knew I was going to take up valuable local resources by going there so was I really going to be able to have a positive impact? Was I just engaging in poverty porn? However, I went to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8th. It is easy to feel jaded about this event. It can be a tyranny for already busy women who are asked to sit on a bunch of panels, go to a tonne of events and push out affirmative messages about girl power on social media. Every year there is the inevitable hand wringing and navel gazing about its use and some women flounce off declaring it's not for them. Well, to the women and girls of Kakuma, it mattered. It was a chance to feel heard and seen and part of something wider than the camp. It was so moving to hear all the poetry and dance (and fashion shows) that they had prepared. Strong, thoughtful, brave, brilliant, switched on girls powered by technology. I felt honoured to have met them.
Now we are home I want help the www.iamthecode.org get more resources and grow. We had a reception in Parliament this week to raise the profile of the work. We welcomed Carolyn van Buren, the wonderful head of UNHCR in Kenya and thanked her for all she has done to operationalise Iamthecode. But there is much more to do.
Finally, I send a huge thank you to everyone who helped me but also who work so hard in this high stress environment. Thank you Janet, part of the UN protocol team, thank you Francois who runs the camp and thank you to the miraculous Rose who deals with the nitty gritty of the charity’s operations while also dealing with the reality of living in the camp with her children.
PS. I am climbing the three highest peaks of the UK to mark twenty years since I had a very serious car accident. I am doing it to support four charities in total, one of whom is iamthecode, and all of whom are related to my own story. I really need your help and will be writing about more of the mission as the year unfolds. But you can donate here or spread the word if you are able. Thank you. I need all the support I can get!
https://www.givewheel.com/fundraising/2189/3-peaks-challenge/