A two-month-long coding boot camp for Mongolian girls has successfully concluded.   The projects range from travel sites and online games to an emergency alert system for women, all conceived and coded during eight weeks of the summer holidays. None of the girls had any coding experience before joining the program, and as they presented their work, each project seemed more impressive than the last. Together, they point the way to a new generation of female technology leaders in Mongolia.

Of the thousands of girls who applied for the Girls for Coding program, 50 were admitted in 2022 through a three-stage selection process. They then received hundreds of hours of tailor-made training in coding, delivered by tutors from the School of Applied Science and Engineering at the National University of Mongolia. IT and finance industry executives also visited the camp to share their experience and insights.

The program was initiated by B.Bolor-Erdene, one of Mongolia’s most widely known tech personalities and a woman recognized as much for her sense of style as for having driven a revolution in public services for the digital age. She started Girls for Coding to sow the seeds of a digital future for Mongolia by making space for women in tech. Her overall aim is to transform Mongolia into a “digital first” country. In Mongolia, women generally have a higher level of education than men do, but they lag behind in IT participation.

Empowering young women is essential to achieving sustainable economic development, according to the World Bank. In a recent 2023 Mongolia outlook report, the World Bank said the country would benefit from more inclusive job creation, and called for more labor force participation by women and better opportunities for young people in general. Despite the fact that Mongolian women are better educated than their male peers and have higher rates of literacy, they are also less likely to make use of this education. Initiatives such as the girls’ coding boot camp, and an emerging tech startup scene that has a more inclusive outlook, are welcomed as steps forward.