Mariam Sumbadze, Managing Director at Georgian ICT Cluster
Recently, the EU has been active in establishing a number of initiatives concerning the enhancement of IT sector in Eastern Partnership countries.
Thus, EU4Digital launched a new activity to support women mentorship programs in the tech sector in the EaP countries. StrategEast has interviewed experts from the EaP countries. Here are the answers from the expert on Georgia.
Do you consider such programs timely in the post-pandemic period? Have you notices the rising need for digital technologies to support the response to the pandemic consequences in your country?
Technologies and innovation provide a great opportunity for Eastern Partnership countries that are pursuing their path towards growth and development to create a healthy, transparent, and profitable environment for businesses, startups, and foreign investors, as well as for the citizens. “Together for resilient, sustainable and integrated economies” and “Together towards a resilient digital transformation“ has been part of the EaP Development strategy which brings us directly to enhancing the tech sector. By supporting legislative changes, financial aid, and applying best practices this approach allows for better access to digital infrastructure and services, better public services and administration for citizens, the extension of broadband infrastructures especially in regions and local areas, and a strengthened e-Governance. Georgia has chosen the path to interfere and connect with the digital enhancement strategy and become one of the driving forces for implementation and partnership. Within this initiative, lots of partnership and collaboration has been established involving EU and EaP countries, which directly brings us to have the business growth opportunities at hand. However, when it comes to state aid, the EU Commission allows more flexibility in the EU state aid rules. The assistance and support programs are widely distributed to the partner states and bring more value to the partner state SMEs. A lot has been done since 2015 into harmonizing EU Digital markets to EaP countries and the pattern must continue growing. These initiatives must address the unjustified restrictions and rules in regards of data exchange within EU and EaP countries to ensure that IT sector doesn’t have their hands tied to extend and attract more collaborations as the beauty of the tech community is being global.
A knowledge-based economy driven by technologies and innovation has been the focal point for the country development in Georgia for last couple of years. Collaborating with different international organizations and working together with European and eastern European countries is the essential standing point for future successful growth. EU4Digital regardless of tough pandemic situation has brought significant impact by bringing the International Digital community together in Georgia and once again contributed to putting Georgia on the map of digital transformation. The ongoing pandemic situation has drawn high attention for the world of information technologies, while the field representatives have been strongly aware of the advantages the IT sector brings, other businesses and regular citizens have also been attracted and involved in large-scale digital transformation. Despite many uncertainties posed by the pandemic, there are clearly two major imperatives between which our further actions must be balanced – the physical security of people and the provision of their living environment. It is critical to focus on the current situation in order to be able to develop and implement a reasonable, effective, and efficient adaptation-recovery strategy alongside with adoption of digital transformation strategies, which have become inseparable. While speaking of businesses it has also been shown that transformation shall involve not only simply enriching pre-pandemic process technologies, but also requires transforming the business model, all its components step by step and moving towards more tech-savvy and digital-friendly models. We as a Georgian ICT Cluster together with our member companies, who have more than 20 years of experience on the market are open for collaborations and highly looking forward for future partnership and cooperation opportunities in order to tackle the recent difficulties after the pandemic has changed the world scenario by becoming the top Digital Transformation and Go-To partner for local and international SMEs and organizations.
While raising need of talent on the tech market supporting and advocating for women in tech has still been a big challenge for the international community. The World Economic Forum states, that empowering women globally can bring $28 trillion in GDP growth within the next seven years. Women create big and profitable businesses, as evidenced by the current boom in Femtech, women control 60% of the finances and make 80% of the purchasing decisions. Femtech has become the next big thing however diversity, having both women and men represented equally in every business is the key to creating a successful business and product. The way we see how to attract more women in tech stand on working with associations and initiatives that promote gender diversity and create a strategy for future enhancements. Planning specific campaigns or roles supporting acquiring more female potential candidates for tech role openings and supporting educational programs, which promotes diversity in tech will create the base for development and growth. The mentorship program by EU4Digital is a wonderful and strong way to grow the women tech community and women entrepreneurship and show successful and well-known women in tech, who regardless of the difficulties and gender bias have been able to make their voices heard and now are ready to assist next generation to pursue their tech careers. While talking to younger generations, the stereotypes about being a girl in computing still exist, therefore the change begins from this starting point where we change the vision of how young girls see themselves in tech careers and as they say “When one woman helps another wonderful things happen.”
Learn more about digitalization processes amid pandemic in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Ukraine
