In the words of Victoria Phago: 'That moment made me feel I belong in tech'

A first-person reflection by Victoria Phago, African Girls Can Code Initiative alumna, Class of 2024, South Africa

This year I turn 19, and I am studying for a diploma in Computer Science at Tshwane University of Technology. But my journey here did not follow the path most people expect. I grew up in Soshanguve, a township near Pretoria, with both my parents, though our home was not an easy one. My father worked, but the money never stretched far enough, and my parents eventually separated. I am the second-born of five children, and the only girl. Growing up, I learned early what it means to want something and already know the answer is no. If there was a school trip, I knew I was not going, so I never even asked. That is the reality for many young women in South Africa. 

My township was still a caring place; neighbours looked out for one another. But I watched so many girls around me drop out of school. It becomes normal when the pattern repeats everywhere you look: leave school, find a boyfriend, start a family young. When there is no food at home and no money for basics, that path can start to feel less like a choice and more like the only option. I took a different route. In South Africa, the standard route to university is completing Grade 12 (our final school-leaving exam) at around 18. Instead, in Grade 10, I enrolled at a TVET college, a technical and vocational institution, funded through our national student aid scheme. I would still earn a qualification equivalent to matric, but with actual technical skills in IT, and my meals would be covered. That mattered enormously to me. Even so, I did not have a big dream. I assumed I would get a qualification, take whatever job I could find, and not be picky. I never had role models growing up, not someone I could sit with and ask for advice.

I first heard about AGCCI, the African Girls Can Code Initiative, through my college. A lecturer mentioned it briefly, describing it only as a good opportunity for us girls. I did not fully understand what I was signing up for, but the mention of coding and robotics drew me in. Coding, honestly, was something I claimed to hate, not because I was bad at it (I always passed), but because it demanded real, sustained thinking, and I preferred anything simple and quick. AGCCI taught me that nothing worthwhile comes easily. Once I actually put in the effort, I realised I had never lacked ability. I had only lacked patience.

But the moment that changed me most was not a coding lesson. It was the daily affirmations, which are a daily activity at the AGCCI South Africa Coding and Robotics camp. At the start and end of each day, we would recite affirmations loudly like: ‘I am smart. I am beautiful. I am brave. I can do this. I am worthy of everything good in life'. I had always been boxed in as "the smart one," never the popular one, and I had built my whole identity, and a lot of social anxiety, around that label. AGCCI taught me that how others see me is not mine to carry. What matters is how I see myself. I stopped shrinking before I even opened my mouth to speak. That shift reshaped my ambitions too. Before AGCCI, my only goal was to find a job someday. Now my goal is to gain real experience and eventually build something of my own in tech, a path I once thought incompatible with who I was. 

After the programme, I applied to further my studies, even though people warned me that universities rarely accept TVET graduates. A session on how AI and robotics will define the future convinced me I needed to stand inside that future, not watch it from outside. In 2025, AGCCI allowed the 2024 alumni to go to Huawei in Johannesburg for a celebration of Girls in ICT Day. That visit sealed it for me: one of the young women in the Huawei graduate programme became something of a mentor, pushing me to commit to three more years of study rather than settle for a quick certificate. That moment made me feel like I belong in tech.

Today, studying computer science, I notice AGCCI's influence constantly, in how I engage with new concepts and how readily I speak up in class. I have returned to AGCCI as a training assistant, part of its very first cohort of trainers, and it is one of my proudest moments. I see myself in these girls: high potential paired with low confidence, exactly where I once stood. I plan to keep giving back too, teaching basic computer skills at a local centre that supports orphaned children. My dream now is to become a data scientist, and eventually to build a business in my own community that employs local people and draws more girls into technology. When I picture an African woman running her own data centres one day, I see myself standing right in the middle of that future.

The African Girls Can Code Initiative (AGCCI was commissioned by UN Women and the African Union Commission (AUC) in collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Phase II is funded by the Government of Belgium and Siemens. In South Africa, it is implemented in partnership with the National Departments of Higher Education and Training; Basic Education; and Science, Technology and Innovation.