While growing up, Sylvia Jebet aspired to be a teacher as she enjoyed math and physics, but never imagined herself working in telecommunications engineering.
She works as a developer relations associate and women in tech lead Africa at Africa’s Talking.
In an interview with NTV in Shanghai, China, where she had recently completed Huawei’s Seeds for Future programme, she stated that she planned to apply her technological skills and critical lessons from the program to assist improve agriculture in Uasin Gishu.
Jebet graduated from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in 2022 with a degree in Telecommunications and Information Engineering.
“At the time we were about 10 ladies in class, out of an opening class of 60 students. We graduated at about 41 students,” she said.
Jebet’s enthusiasm for technology was fueled by the desire for technology she witnessed in her home and the devices she dealt with on a regular basis.
Perhaps this is what drew her to the Huawei Seeds for the Future program, which provides hands-on training and exposes tech talent to real-world problems.
She is the only woman among the five Kenyan students chosen to participate in the program that focuses on Africans in the Sub-Saharan region.
“We got to learn about artificial intelligence from a country that is far ahead in terms of technology and saw real-time applications of these technologies here in China. We were stationed in Beijing
“There was a bit of telecoms, networking and other systems and how they are able to communicate with each other literally. Then that aspect which we’ve been able to touch on of 5G, incorporates a lot of networking and cloud technology was big too in our lessons,” she said.
The cohort learning period lasts a year.
Being feted and going through her convocation at a global tech event like MWC is a significant accomplishment for her as a woman in technology.
Armed with her knowledge from the Huawei program, Jebet now wants to put it to use in her backyard in Uasin Gishu.
Her goal is deploying technology to support agricultural production in order to help alleviate, among other things, perennial post-harvest losses by fully mechanizing the entire agricultural process.
“Being in China has shown me how we can effectively mechanize our farming back at home. I have learnt how we can do vertical farming structures like hydroponic farming and green housing with key monitoring points like soil pH, soil sciences, knowing the right moisture content for production, and manage crop production end to end,” she explained.
