Inq. employs 47% female techies
Katlego Isaacs | Tuesday March 15, 2022 06:00
The Mauritius based company has decidedly opened its doors to staff that has nearly half its complement made up entirely of women.
Speaking at the company’s Botswana launch, Inq. chief executive officer (CEO), Christian Wirtz stated, “The inclusion of women in any industry is absolutely paramount to building a work environment in which a diversity of ideas can thrive.' He added, “We’re proud to have a company in which 47% of our entire staff is women, something that is often a rare sight anywhere in the tech industry.”
In so doing, Inq. has created one of the most female inclusive tech companies in the country as a response to the Deloitte Global Insights' statistics that show that women account for only 33% of the overall workforce in global technology firms.
Managing Director of Inq. Botswana Mokgethi Nyatseng said that the company will utilize a software development team comprising women from the Botswana Accountancy College (BAC) to relieve the company’s reliance on Indian-based developer teams for local software development. “Our company is about making things easier and bringing solutions closer to our clients as much as possible, and apart from bringing solutions closer to our clients, we want to bring the development of our solution software close to our clients as well,” Nyatseng said.
Minister of Transportation and Communication, Thulagano Segoko commended the move to localize development noting that government has made a significant investment in the communications infrastructure of the nation and that it is pleasing to see those investments bear fruit. “As the government, we invested heavily in developing the prerequisite infrastructure for the development of a robust IT sector. These investments, such as fibre, for example, have led to people having greater and more seamless access to information and knowledge. Even in business, we have facilitated an environment in which doing digital business has never been so easy,” Segoko noted. “As a nation, to see such a return on investment come to diversify our economy and offer such an inclusive working environment only seeks to enrich our local industries,” he added.
The minister additionally looked forward to the skills, experience, and technology that Inq. will impart in Botswana and how it will align the country towards meeting its fourth industrial revolution targets. Inq. has 16 contact offices across seven different African countries that conduct various digital solutions for corporations from digital orchestration, administration, billing, provisioning, management, support, and federation. In a showcase of the company’s abilities, the CEO demonstrated the cloud text recognition and interpretation software that can read various documents such as ID (omang) cards instantly and store related information in categorized sections on the cloud database.
They also showcased the company’s edge cloud computing services, which bring computing resources closer to the end-user and allow users to access data even if their connection to the main database has been interrupted, which eliminates the likelihood of network-related service interruptions. In theory, this could allow companies and even government services to access and input client data at any time, eliminating the era of network interruptions halting the entire service delivery capabilities of offices across the country.
The company also claims to use robust data security protocols that will ensure that any data input on their systems will be securely protected from any unauthorized access. The company insisted that it only uses open-source software, which furthers its commitment to creating an inclusive tech industry in Botswana.