The South African aviation industry has a statistic that all South Africa should be proud of.
Female pilots comprise 9.8% of South Africa’s pilots. This places it third in the world, after India, where women comprise 12% of all pilots, and Ireland, which has 9.9% female pilots.
At the recent 10th Anniversary Barsa Conference held at the Houghton Hotel in Johannesburg, the delegates were interested in the presentation, given by pilot and pilot instructor, Refilwe Ledwaba, about the Girls Fly Programme Africa, an initiative she started to encourage females to consider careers in aviation. She is now Executive Director of the programme.
Ledwaba founded Southern African Women in Aviation and Aerospace Industry in 2009, which later established Girls Fly Programme Africa to create a platform that educates girls about aviation and aerospace and empowers them with information and access to other women in the field, enabling gender equality in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields. The foundation currently operates in Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya and South Africa.
It provides annual programmes with varied, exciting, stimulating, engaging and challenging educational initiatives, aimed at:
- Encouraging innovation and shaping of mindsets.
- Making aviation and space a viable career choice for girls.
- Cultivating a culture of community-building through volunteerism.
- Creating equal opportunities through skills-development and scholarships in the aviation and space industry.
The Aviation and Space Technology girls’ camp is an aviation, space technology experience for young women from Grade 8 to 12. The camp aims to engage, empower, and inspire young girls to pursue their careers in the aviation and space industries or other related STEM fields. At camp, the girls explore aviation and space through classrooms and hands-on experiences with facilitators, mentors and camp counsellors.
They gain life skills and discover the unlimited opportunities that a career in aviation and space presents. The girls get to use design-thinking and technology to invent, build and present solutions to current challenges in the aviation and space industry.
