Ericsson Egypt Participates in "Tekla Dialogue" to Empower Girls in Technological Fields

As part of celebrating the International Women's Day, Ericsson Egypt and the Swedish embassy in Cairo jointly hosted "Tekla Dialogue" that was held at the Swedish embassy in Egypt, during the period March 8-9. The event included a workshop to train girls on data encryption, Artificial Intelligence and innovation, as well as a panel on technology and creativity and women's underrepresentation in technological areas of work. 

Sameh Shoukry, Ericsson Egypt Country, said: "Ericsson Egypt's celebration of International Women's Day this year will be through holding events and workshops in cooperation with experts from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH), with the aim of achieving added value for girls, as we believe in the need to achieve gender equality, as well as the need to provide a platform for discussion about challenges facing women such as stereotypes and rules that cause imbalances between the sexes with respect to science, technology and innovation, in a bid to find solutions through dialogue and training."

Tekla Dialogue is a key initiative launched by Swedish pop star Robyn. This year it is organized in Egypt as the first country in the Middle East to host this event. The two-day event is organized by the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH), the Swedish Institute, the Swedish Embassy and Ericsson, as an event held to celebrate the International Women's Day. The dialogue also aims to engage more girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) subjects.

The first day of Tekla Dialogue featured a workshop for 30 girls from Egyptian schools, aged between 12 to 15 years, in which engineers from Artificial Intelligence subdivision at Ericsson Egypt delivered a training workshop on several ICT-related topics and innovation.

During the second day, a panel was held on the underrepresentation of women in the technology sector, which addressed means to increase opportunities to empower women and girls. The panel, was joined by Amir Sherif, CEO and Founder of ‘Wazzuf’ and ‘Forasna’, Randa El Sawi, News and Media Director at Ericsson Middle East and Africa, Dr. Sherif El Qassas, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the American University in Cairo and an expert in security management, software engineering and open source technologies and Yasmine Moustafa, an Egyptian scientist specializing in energy and environment engineering, who had asteroid ‘31910 Moustafa’ named in her honor by NASA.