Sustainable Investment: Code, the language of our time

Mariéme Jamme is the founder of iamtheCODE, a global movement teaching computer programming to marginalized girls and young women.

Ask her why investing in them matters and she tells you it is about unlocking talent that will benefit the global economy of the future.

"We have a program called Slum Coders - women can now learn how to code computer languages. We will see many young women participating in our global economy, getting the skills they need in finance, in tech and in manufacturing."

"'I always believed technology is an enabler," she adds, "What I want to do with iamtheCODE globally is to make sure we empower the future digital leaders."

IamtheCODE's bold vision is to reach 1 million girls from under-privileged areas in Africa, the Middle East and South America by 2030, and to contribute to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal on Quality Education (SDG 4).

SDG 4 has been described as "the golden thread that runs through all 17 SDGs" by UN General Assembly President Peter Thomson.

Despite huge progress in increasing access to education over the past decade, more than 60 million primary school age children still remain out of school and over 200 million teenagers are missing out on their secondary education, most of them girls.

"If all adults completed secondary education, 420 million people could be lifted out of poverty, reducing the number of poor people by more than half globally," says Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO.

UBS encourages its private investors to partner with organizations to increase the scale of impact and help meet the UN's 2030 deadline.

"You may not see a return on your investment straight away," says Jamme, "but you'll see a return in the next five or 10 years. If I can empower one girl today in Uganda by teaching her to code, one girl in Senegal, one girl in the U.K., she will empower 1,000 other girls."

IamtheCODE now has a presence in 49 countries, most recently opening programs in Japan and China.

More than 4,000 girls and young women have benefited from their methodology, among them Brenda Katwesigye, the CEO of Wazi Vision, a company that provides affordable eye care in Africa.

"On top of getting the drive and resources to learn how to code, I benefitted from having a mentor," says Katwesigye. "When you have someone by your side who has already walked your path, tough things always get easier and entrepreneurship ceases to be a blind journey."

For Jamme, the girls she is training are the computer programmers of the future who will fill gaps in the global marketplace.

"The girls I'm working with right now in Uganda for example, who I am teaching to code, they are 11 years old — in the next 15 years they will be the women you will need to work in the global economy. Banks like UBS are investing right now; they're planting the seeds in those girls' lives," she says passionately.

In the U..S alone, there is a need for more computer science graduates. According to research compiled by code.org, a U.S. non-profit dedicated to expanding access to computer science, 71 percent of all new jobs in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) are in computing but only 8 percent of STEM graduates are in Computer Science.

Jamme is determined to give disadvantaged girls an education and a future. To do this, her strategy is to play big and meet with wealth managers and significant investors.

"Today we're at the table with the top clients, talking about our businesses. If we can get a synergy between us and the wealth manager, then we can have a global impact. This is about using wealth for good."