Teach Tech Innovation to Girls & Women in Tanzania

Over the months we conducted two complementary programs in Arusha. The Innovation Club is an ongoing program that guides young women through a full human-centered design cycle, from empathizing with their communities to defining challenges, ideating, and prototyping solutions and have now selected project ideas to move forward with. The Creative Capacity Building (CCB) Workshop is an intensive program that takes participants from concept to creation through hands-on making and fabrication, developing practical, locally relevant solutions.

Creative Capacity Building (CCB) Workshop

Alongside the Innovation Club, we successfully ran the CCB Workshop cohort. Participants developed and progressed three project concepts:

Compost Turner – A mechanical tool that automates the turning and aeration of compost and manure, producing higher-quality organic fertilizer for smallholder farmers.

Peanut Roasting Machine – A simple, locally built device that enables consistent, even roasting of peanuts, supporting small-scale food entrepreneurs in improving product quality and productivity.

Vegetable Slicer – A hand-operated slicing tool that speeds up vegetable preparation, reducing time spent on food processing for home cooks, market vendors, and small food businesses.

Impact

The CCB Workshop delivered measurable outcomes for its participants:

• 100% female participation, directly promoting gender equity in technology and innovation
• Enhanced technical skills, an innovation mindset, and strengthened entrepreneurship potential among participants

Next Steps

Building on the progress made, the following steps are planned:

• Support prototype improvement following feedback received from community testing –iterating on the CCB workshop prototypes to strengthen their real-world performance.
• Launch the prototyping phase for the Innovation Club – kicking off the first hands-on build sessions with participants now that project selection is complete.
• Continue iterative testing: build, test with community members, gather feedback, refine, and repeat.

Thanks to your support through GlobalGiving, young women in Tanzania are gaining the tools, mentorship, and opportunities they need to become confident problem-solvers and change-makers in their communities. Every project built, every challenge tackled, and every prototypetested is a step toward a future where girls and women lead innovation in Africa.

The program centers on a dedicated Girls Innovation Club that provides a safe, supportive, and stigma-free space where girls and women can engage with technology and creative problem-solving on their own terms.

Since January, 45 girls have been enrolled in the Innovation Club and have been introduced to the fundamentals of design thinking and human-centered innovation. Participants have engaged in community research, empathy exercises, and challenge identification and are now in the exciting process of selecting the specific problems they will prototype solutions for in the coming phase.

In February, we also successfully delivered the SheMakesIt Workshop a one-day intensive that brought together 15 girls and women 20-36 ages for hands-on training in digital fabrication, covering human-centered design, 3D printing, CNC routing, and CNC laser cutting.

Highlights at a glance: 60 total participants in Arusha and Dar es salaam regions.

Innovation Club

Skills and Learnings: Design Thinking

Key learning areas covered during this period include:

• Empathize – Learning to observe and listen deeply to understand the real needs and experiences of community members, rather than assuming what problems exist
• Define – Synthesizing research and observations into a clear, focused problem statement that captures the root of a challenge
• Ideate – Generating a wide range of creative ideas and solutions through structured brainstorming, suspending judgement to allow bold thinking
• Challenge Identification – Using research and personal experience to pinpoint the specific community challenges participants are most motivated to solve

Upcoming Milestones

• Finalize challenge/project selection
• Launch the prototyping phase, first hands-on build sessions
• Introduce participants to making and fabrication tools relevant to their chosen challenges
• Begin iterative testing: build, test with community members, refine, repeat

SheMakesIt

Skills and Learnings:

The SheMakesIt Workshop covered four interconnected areas across the course of the day:

• Human-centered Design; empathy, problem framing & ideation
• 3D Printer; design & printing
• CNC Router; precision cutting of materials like wood & plastic
• CNC Laser Cutter; detailed cutting & engraving

Impact & Outcomes

The SheMakesIt Workshop was successfully completed with all 15 participants, making it one of the first digital fabrication training experiences of its kind designed specifically for girls and women in Dar es Salaam.