Maryam Gwadabe of Blue Sapphire Hub is our #BellaNaijaWCW this Week!

For our #BellaNaijaWCW feature this week, we shine the spotlight and celebrate Maryam Gwadabe, an Information Technology guru who’s not just advocating for bridging the digital gender divide, but also putting in the work to make this happen.

Maryam is the founder of Blue Sapphire Hub, an ICT and Business hub which helps people seeking to get involved with ICT either through skill acquisition, business development/ consultancy, product development/consultancy or resource access. The hub is located in the heart of Kano state, north west, Nigeria.

Maryam’s goal is to encourage people across social strata, age, and gender, to engage ICT and entrepreneurship.

After graduating from a vocational skills training program where she learned how to code, Maryam decided to teach some of her friends and close relatives and that’s how Blue Sapphire was born. Maryam invested NGN150,000 in training materials, developed a curriculum, and begun teaching basic and advanced ICT skills from her living room.

Within a year, her living room was packed, and when her dad saw this growth, he supported her to open Blue Sapphire Hub in 2015.

Since then, Blue Sapphire Hub has stayed through to its goal of providing quality ICT education and developing innovation and creativity among students so that they can build successful ICT careers and grow their businesses.

Over 5,000 women and youth have been trained by Maryam, and more than 20 business have received business development support from her.

Maryam is one of the young individuals spotlighted in Forbes Africa’s 30 Under 30 list for 2020. She holds a B.Sc in Computer Software Engineering from Coventry University and a Masters in Computer Network Management from Middlesex University.

We celebrate Maryam for her contribution to human capacity/business development in northern Nigeria, and we’re rooting for her.