Last weekend Nairobi hosted nearly 30 programmers, computer scientists, software engineers, and web developers at an overnight hack-a-thon.

Their goal: To design the best mobile app for a prize of Ksh75,000 ($875). The participants were young women keen on breaking into the male-dominated field.

“Our goal was to have the first girl’s hack-a-thon in Kenya,” declared Judith Owigar, founder of Akirachix, a collective working to increase women’s participation in Kenya’s booming tech industry.

Hack-a-thons provide networking opportunities, coding practice, and competition for young techies. Akirachix organised the event, which began the morning of Saturday August 17 at iHub, an incubation space for tech entrepreneurs off Ngong Road.

“We want to encourage more girls to take up mobile-app development, to build relevant apps for women,” Ms Owigar said. By Sunday, the participants had built five mobile applications targeting women, ranging from fashion and dieting to professional networking.

“It’s time to get our hands dirty to build our solution!” announced Leo Mutuku, one of the presenters.

The first task — prototyping a wallet — seemed odd to the computer-savvy crowd. But the exercise, developed by Stanford University Design School, teaches product design — a skill many coders overlook.

“You’re not just designing a wallet. You are coming up with a solution for the problem statement you defined!” said Ms Mutuku.

Leo Mutuku concurred. “Our needs are deeper. Pressing issues are water, access to good health care and education. We have to solve those problems, we have to advocate local solutions instead of relying on others.”

Since its 2010 founding, Akirachix has sought to bring women into technology by collaborating with Nairobi high schools.

They also teach courses in computers, web design, programming, and entrepreneurship to girls from Kibera. Some of the programme’s graduates now work at tech start-ups and a major mobile accounting firm.

Said Ms Owigar, “We are targeting high-school-age girls because the only way you’re going to get more women in tech is to get them at that level.”

At any age, the need for women in technology is clear.

A 2010 Intermedia survey found that Kenyan women own and use mobile phones much less than men, and have significantly less Internet access.

Furthermore, few women attend hack-a-thons or enrol in university tech programmes. One computer science student from Kabarak University said she is the only girl in her class.

But ignoring women’s impact in tech is costly. Low mobile usage amongst women and high female interest in apps like Zap and M-Pesa mean serious growth potential.

Q-Tech won the Ksh 75,000 ($875). The prize was sponsored by infoDev, which according to their website “is a global grant programme managed by the World Bank Group which works at the intersection of innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship to create opportunities for inclusive growth, job creation and poverty reduction.”

The judges were Linda Kamau (of Ushahidi), Kate Kiguru (founder of ICT company Ukall Ltd), Marie Githinji (of Infonet), Judith Owigar.