UN Women has put the stakes plainly: when women and girls are missing from the data, the teams, and the decisions behind artificial intelligence, the technology that gets built ends up reflecting everyone else’s priorities but theirs. On October 24, HERIntelligence is bringing that warning into a room in Jos, Plateau State, hosting its Annual Summit as a space for students and women to learn AI, connect with each other, and start seeing themselves as people who can shape the technology rather than only ever consume it. Index Prima is proud to serve as media partner for the event.
Where HERIntelligence Actually Came From
The organisation’s origin story is personal rather than institutional. Founder Loreta Katok Tohomdet has described starting her own journey into Information Technology in classrooms where women made up only 10 to 20 percent of her fellow students, a gap that widened further during her training at nHub, where over 70 percent of the room was men. Most of the help available came from male colleagues, and late-night coding challenges often meant working through problems with limited access to support that felt genuinely approachable. Rather than simply pushing through that isolation alone, Tohomdet built the thing she wished she’d had: Jostechgirls, a community for young women learning to code. Over time, that community grew into HERIntelligence, a broader movement focused specifically on helping African women learn, lead, and thrive in AI and emerging technology.
What HERIntelligence Actually Runs
The organisation’s programming centres on practical, applicable AI learning rather than abstract theory. Monthly webinars have covered real-world use cases, recent sessions have focused on things like using AI tools to study more effectively, aimed at building a community of people who understand not just what AI tools are but how to actually apply them to real work and real problems. Alongside that virtual programming, HERIntelligence runs rural school outreach, introducing girls and young people in public schools to AI and digital skills directly, an intentional choice to reach communities that rarely get included in Nigeria’s broader tech and AI conversation. That outreach work sits alongside mentorship and hands-on training aimed at building not just technical skill but genuine confidence, the kind that comes from being shown a path rather than simply being told one exists.
Why This Timing Matters
The gender gap HERIntelligence is working against is well documented, not anecdotal. Nigeria’s ICT workforce remains only around 22 percent female, according to industry data, a gap that shows up early and compounds throughout a career rather than closing on its own with time. HERIntelligence’s work sits alongside a genuine, growing wave of similar African initiatives tackling this same problem from different angles, from Data Science Nigeria’s Arewa Ladies4Tech programme focused on women in Northern Nigeria to various AI-focused summits and communities springing up across the country. That broader movement matters context for HERIntelligence specifically: this isn’t an isolated effort, it’s one node in a real, expanding network of people deciding the AI gender gap in Africa is worth actively closing rather than waiting out.
What to Expect on October 24
The HERIntelligence Annual Summit 2026 runs from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm in Jos, Plateau State, built as a space where students and women can learn AI fundamentals, connect with each other and with people already working in the field, and explore what a future in technology could actually look like for them specifically. The framing behind the event is direct: if AI is going to shape the future everyone lives in, women and girls need to be part of building that future now, not brought in after the fact to use tools someone else already designed without them in mind.
The Larger Goal Behind One Day in Jos
A single summit is a starting point, not the whole strategy. HERIntelligence has set itself a considerably larger target: empowering 10,000 African women and girls by 2030 with the skills, mentorship, and community networks needed to genuinely thrive in technology and artificial intelligence. Measured against that goal, events like this one function less as standalone conferences and more as recruitment and momentum points, bringing new people into a pipeline the organisation is trying to build steadily over years rather than one high-profile day.
As HERIntelligence’s own call to action puts it: if AI will influence our future, girls and women need to be part of building that future. October 24, in Jos. The question worth asking yourself now is simple enough. Will you be in the room.
