With her all-woman company, she wants to inspire and guide more Senegalese women into digital professions. She is also planning several impact projects.

Ndeye Saly Dione (photo) is a Senegalese web and mobile developer. Concerned about women’s digital inclusion, she founded tech startup LingeeruTech in 2022, after graduating from the third cohort of Sonatel Academy, a free coding school.

LingeeruTech is a combination of a Wolof and an English word. It means “tech queens.” Truthful to its name, it works on strong impact projects, mostly with women, to identify daily challenges facing populations and address those challenges.

In an interview with We Are Tech, Ms. Ndeye explained that she launched LingeeruTech to get women involved in the ongoing digital transformation. "It all started with an observation I made [during my training] at Sonatel Academy. In my class, there were not many women. Even when I was a web and mobile development intern at water utility SEN'EAU, I was the only woman on the team. […] In my close circles, I didn’t have a female that could serve as a role model in the digital sector. By setting up that startup, I want to serve as that role model and show young women who are still studying or struggling with professional orientations that women can work in the digital industry,” she explained.

The young entrepreneur indicates that she plans to launch a training center where women and young girls who usually drop out of school early can be introduced to coding and digital tools. The aim, she says, is to give women the skills they need to work with dignity.

Currently, with her team, she is developing two key projects. The first is Fayy Fepp (pay everywhere in Wolof), a fintech solution that aims to help businesses and merchants easily accept mobile payments through QR Coding technology.

The second one is Samamënmën, which means “my skills” in Wolof.  It aims to enhance the skills of every Senegalese to enable them to sell their skills and get hired based on those skills, not on the diplomas they have.  

Melchior Koba