De Beers Expands Tech Programs for Women

RAPAPORT… De Beers has extended its partnership with WomEng, a social enterprise that aims to expand female participation in the engineering and technology industry.

“We have an ambitious commitment to achieve gender parity across our global workforce by 2030, and key to achieving this will be fostering greater diversity within the talent pipeline,” Katie Fergusson, De Beers’ senior vice president for sustainable impact, said Tuesday. “With the programs offered being expanded to include an emphasis on sustainability-related fields, we’re working to build both a more equitable and sustainable future in alignment with our ambitious Building Forever goals.”

The three-year extension — announced on International Women’s Day — will see programs expand outside of southern African to Canada and the UK. It will also move beyond university courses to include vocational and skilled trades, and will incorporate a greater emphasis on issues related to sustainable development, such as renewable energies and climate solutions, the miner noted.

The original three-year partnership focused on women and girls in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, where most of De Beers’ mines are located. It reached more than 2,200 students by the end of 2021 through a program targeting schoolgirls as well as a fellowship scheme for women studying engineering or technology at university.

Image: Participants in a De Beers-WomEng program near the Venetia Mine in South Africa. (De Beers)