Why Investing in Girls Education Must Include Technology and AI

Every girl deserves the opportunity to learn, make choices about her future, and develop the skills to pursue those choices. Yet for millions of girls, remaining in school is still not guaranteed.

This is part of the focus of the 2026 International Day of the Girl Child, marked under the theme, End child marriage and invest in girls’ rights. According to the United Nations, more than 12 million girls are married before adulthood every year, with sub-Saharan Africa recording the highest prevalence at 31%. As such, keeping girls in school is among the proven approaches identified for preventing child marriage and protecting girls’ ability to shape their own futures.

But investing in girls’ education raises an important question: what are girls being prepared for while they are in school?

As technology and artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly become part of how people learn, work, and solve problems, access to education must also give girls the skills and opportunities to participate in that changing world.

Preparing Girls for a More Digital Future

Technology is already an important part of education and the workplace, but girls do not participate equally in the opportunities it creates.

According to UNESCO’s 2024 Gender Report: Technology on Her Terms, gender gaps persist both in access to technology and in the acquisition of digital skills. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, for every 100 men with tech skills, only about 40 to 44 women have the same level of proficiency. And in most African countries, fewer than one in three STEM graduates are women.

The gap becomes even clearer when looking at more advanced skills. According to UNICEF’s Girl Goals: What Has Changed for Girls? report, across 29 countries with available data, only around 1-2% of adolescent girls and young women reported having programming skills.

These gaps matter because education is not only about giving girls access to classrooms. It is also about giving them the knowledge and skills to participate fully in the opportunities available to them.

And as AI becomes more present across education, business and other sectors, girls should have opportunities to understand these technologies, use them confidently, and develop the skills to contribute to how they are applied.

Giving Girls the Opportunity to Create with Technology

This means technology education should go beyond teaching girls how to use digital tools. Girls also need opportunities to experiment, solve problems, ask questions, and see themselves as people who can build with technology.

Tech4Dev explored this approach through the AI Inter-District Secondary School Challenge, which brought secondary school girls together to develop AI-powered solutions to problems they recognized within their schools and communities.

The initiative began with the Tech Girls Drive advocacy across 31 public secondary schools in Lagos Education Districts II and IV, with 27 schools progressing into the challenge and 135 girls receiving structured training. This was supported by Women Techsters Fellows and volunteers, who ran sensitization sessions on digital skills, AI, and guided them on how to identify social problems and develop technology-based responses to them.

From the participating 27 schools, 6 made it through to the Grand Finale, where the girls presented the solutions they had developed. And the results showed what technology education can look like when girls are given room to create.

Students from Mende Junior High School, Maryland, won first place with Learning Without Limits, a platform designed to make classroom content more accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Onike Girls Junior High School, Iwaya, placed second with the Onike Girls Alarm Station, a safety application built around an emergency alert feature, while Mende Senior High School, Maryland, came third with SpeakSafe, an anonymous platform that was built for reporting bullying.

These solutions came from problems the girls could see around them, and their experience demonstrates why early exposure to AI and digital problem-solving is important. Girls can learn not only how technology works, but how it can be used to respond to challenges in their own communities.

Investing in the Girls Who Will Shape the Future

The call to invest in girls’ rights must continue to include efforts that keep girls in school, to keep them safe, and to ensure that they are free to make decisions about their futures.

And this means expanding access to digital skills, AI literacy, mentorship, and practical opportunities that allow girls to move from using technology to imagining what they can create with it.

This International Day of the Girl Child, investing in girls’ education should mean ensuring that girls have the tools, knowledge, and confidence to take their place in an increasingly digital world and help shape what comes next.

Happy International Day of the Girl Child!