Kaspersky, together with Smart Africa and Africaines in Tech, has launched an innovative, science-backed career orientation test “Future You in Tech” created to promote professional development for young women in the cybersecurity industry and help remove potential entry barriers. The test is designed to help them discover which career paths best align with their interests, skills, and personality.

The IT industry continues to face a significant gender imbalance. While technology is one of the fastest-growing fields shaping the global future, women remain underrepresented due to systemic barriers such as stereotypes and unequal workplace opportunities.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2024, women make up only 28.2% of the global STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) workforce.

With this new initiative, Kaspersky and its partners aim to lower these barriers by sparking interest, building awareness, and offering guidance to the next generation of women in cybersecurity.

The orientation test is designed to help young women discover which cybersecurity career paths best align with their interests, skills, personality, and values. The test guides participants through scenarios that reveal their natural problem-solving styles and strengths.

Once completed, the results highlight each participant’s top two matches out of six possible cybersecurity roles. The six cybersecurity paths covered in the test are:

• Threat Intelligence — analysing cybercriminal groups and predicting their next moves.
• Security Operations (SOC) — monitoring systems, detecting threats, and responding to incidents.
• Malware Analysis — reverse-engineering malicious code and creating detection rules.
• Network Security — protecting IT infrastructure, running penetration tests, and securing networks.
• Information Security Research — uncovering vulnerabilities, exploring new attack techniques, and designing security standards.
• Security Assessment — testing and auditing systems to identify risks before attackers exploit them.

By taking just a few minutes to complete the test, young women can gain a clearer picture of how their abilities and passions align with the cybersecurity profession and take their first step towards a rewarding career protecting people, organisations, and the digital society at large.

Alongside these personalised matches, participants receive explanations of the roles and advice from Kaspersky’s female experts who work in these fields.

They also receive suggested next steps such as recommended readings or practical activities to try, developed together with Smart Africa, Africaines in Tech, and Kaspersky Academy.

“We recommend young women to take this orientation test — even if you never considered a career in cybersecurity. This test would provide you with an unbiased view — while cybersecurity is a field, that requires technical skills development, it also needs curiosity, creativity, problem-solving, and resilience — qualities many young women already have.

The test would help one to connect strengths with real career paths, empower to see a future in cybersecurity and to take first steps with confidence,” comments Evgeniya Russkikh, Head of Academic Affairs at Kaspersky.

This launch builds on Kaspersky’s long-term commitment to supporting women in technology. As of early 2023, women represented 25 percent of the company’s global tech workforce — a 6.9 percentage point increase over four years.

To further amplify women’s voices, Kaspersky also runs the Empower Women digital project, which raises awareness of gender-related challenges, shares expert perspectives, and offers practical advice for building fairer and more inclusive environments in tech and beyond.

The Federal Government through the Ministry of Trade and Investment has set up a regulatory committee to deepen digital market penetration and boost exportation of African products.

The committee was set up at the AfCFTA Digital Trade Market Access Roundtable organised by the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, hosting regulatory stakeholders from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa.

Jumoke Oduwole, minister for Industry, Trade and Investment speaking at the event said, “The Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment is committed to support your expansion into African markets. To do this, we will actively steer the regulators’ working group established yesterday. This group will continue the momentum of regulatory cooperation beyond this event, creating a working channel for addressing challenges and advancing solutions.

“Also, we will explore opportunities for the passing of licenses. The goal is to create mechanisms where regulatory approvals in one jurisdiction can facilitate or expedite approvals in others, reducing barriers for firms operating across multiple markets,” Jumoke said.

The minister lamented poor exportation of Africa’s digitally delivered services globally despite the talents and resources, urging the continent to collaborate to achieve desired results leveraging enormous potentials that the Digital Trade Protocol holds.

“For digital services, the AfCFTA opportunity is particularly compelling. Africa currently accounts for less than 10 per cent in digitally delivered services exports globally. But we have the talent, the demand, innovative experience, and now the regulatory framework to dramatically transform our levels of digital trade.”

The minister added that, “Currently, only 5 percent of Africa’s digitally delivered services are traded within the continent. This represents an extraordinary untapped opportunity for intra-African digital trade and overarching digital transformation.

“The time to act is now. Nigeria has been designated as the African Union co-Champion of the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade. This is both an honour and a responsibility. To demonstrate our resolve, we commenced regulatory alignment and harmonization of standards with our regional commitments with a Digital Economy and E-Governance bill currently before the National Assembly. As co-Champion, we are committed to demonstrating practical leadership.”

Jumoke said the programme is designed to gain a clear understanding of market entry rules and processes across the countries as they present regulatory categories, licensing requirements, and market entry processes and also have direct access to regulators through our clinic sessions this afternoon.

She tasked Nigeria’s digital service providers for compliance with domestic regulatory requirements at home in order to get the backup from the government at international stage.

“As the government creates these enabling structures, we also have clear expectations of Nigerian digital services providers. First, compliance at home is a prerequisite for support abroad. The Corporate Affairs Commission, Nigerian Copyright Commission, Nigerian Communications Commission, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Central Bank of Nigeria are all represented here today to provide consultations.

“The government cannot vouch for your credibility in foreign markets without confidence that you have fully satisfied domestic regulatory requirements. Use today’s clinic sessions to ensure you are in good standing. Second, reflect clearly and strategically on your ambitions to invest across Africa.”

The minister promised that the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment will continue to support the efforts of digital services providers through targeted initiatives which will be announced before the end of the year.

Calvin Phume, director, African Bilateral Economic Relations, Department of Trade and Industry, South Africa described the collaboration as a transformational agenda crucial to harness untapped potentials in Africa’s digital market.

“This is a transformational agenda. We are trying to make sure that we take these opportunities that are derived by AFCTA. Under the digital trade Protocol, it gives us access as South Africans to collaborate with other Africans in terms of ICT and other digital services,” Phume said.

The director added that South Africa will target key areas of collaboration including ICloud, AI innovation, among other.

Elhanan Asara, deputy director, Fintech and Innovation, Bank of Ghana emphasised the importance of the collaboration describing it as an avenue to find solution to export barriers and boost market penetration across Africa.

“There is a deficit. There is a lot of I.T import to the country really formed by Europe and the western world in general compared to Ghana exporting IT services. This is also an opportunity to see if this is utilised in Africa instead of going to the western world.”

Kashifu Inuwa, director-general, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to enhancing digital transparency by creating websites for all 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Nigeria.

Inuwa made this pledge when he led NITDA’s management team on a courtesy visit to the headquarters of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) in Abuja.

He explained that “the initiative would not only improve citizen engagement but also bolster Nigeria’s anti-corruption efforts by making local governments more visible, accountable, and closer to the people.”

“Majority of our local governments don’t have websites. So we are ready to support and provide a website for them to promote digital transparency.

“All local governments should have websites for that. They should be able to put what they are doing online and citizens also can contribute. I believe doing this will help also in improving the anti-corruption practises in Nigeria,” Inuwa said.

The NITDA chief further disclosed that the agency is introducing a licencing regime following a review of the IT clearance guidelines to standardise and improve government IT projects nationwide.

He said; “Recently, we reviewed the IT clearance guideline, and we are coming up with a licencing regime, because part of the challenge globally is that more than 93% of IT projects don’t meet their expectations.”

“From our data, since 2017 we have cleared more than 1,280 projects from 326 federal public institutions.

“This represents just about 28% of the federal public institutions. Many are not complying because we have more than 1,300 federal public institutions. Then also, we have IT projects valued at more than 3.4 trillion.

“So we believe by having this new guideline and having partnerships to strengthen our relationship with you, it will help us achieve a lot,” he stated.

In his response, Dr Musa Adamu Aliyu, chairman of ICPC, welcomed NITDA’s initiative and pledged his commission’s support in promoting digital transparency across government institutions.

He said; “One problematic area we want to address is this issue of digital transparency. We want the Local Government Councils to embrace this issue of allowing people to have access to information.

“Our people need to know what’s happening. They need information. And everywhere in this country people have access to more information.”

“You can go to websites to see what you are doing. Put your project there. Let us see your digital footprints.

“Let us see what you are doing. Because once you are not visible digitally as far as I’m concerned, there’s a problem. Because you don’t want us to know what you are doing,” Aliyu said.

The strategic partnership between NITDA and ICPC reflects a shared commitment to transparency, closing the information gap, reducing corruption risks, and promoting trust between government and citizens.