Award-winning Senegalese-born British businesswoman, technology leader and social entrepreneur Lady Mariéme Jamme today officially launches iamtheCODE Chile, making Chile the 90th country reached by the global movement she founded to equip girls and young women with digital, coding, Artificial Intelligence and leadership skills.
Lady Mariéme has travelled to Santiago to personally meet, inspire and mentor more than 100 girls and young women aged 16–25 during a two-day “Power of AI for Women and Girls” Hackathon, taking place on 21–22 August at INACAP Apoquindo Campus. Participants will explore Artificial Intelligence, coding, responsible technology and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while being challenged to build solutions to issues affecting their communities and their country.
Why Chile, and why now?
Chile has made enormous progress in education, connectivity and digitalisation. It ranks first in Latin America on the Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index (ILIA 2025), and Chilean researchers are leading LatamGPT, the region’s first collaborative large language model. But a significant gender gap remains in the very technologies that will shape the future economy.
According to the OECD, women make up 20% or less of Chile’s tertiary STEM graduates — among the lowest shares in the OECD — and just 12% of new entrants to information and communication technology programmes. Women’s labour-force participation stands at approximately 53%, compared with 72% for men.
For Lady Mariéme, this represents both an urgent challenge and an extraordinary opportunity.
“I did not come to Chile simply to teach girls how to code. I came because I want them to understand that they have a place in the future of Artificial Intelligence.”
“Chile has incredibly talented young women. But talent without access, skills, confidence, mentorship and opportunity can easily be left behind. AI is changing the world very quickly, and we cannot allow another generation of girls to watch that transformation from the sidelines.”
— Lady Mariéme Jamme, Founder & CEO, iamtheCODE
Lady Mariéme believes the AI revolution must not reproduce the inequalities of previous technological revolutions. Her ambition through iamtheCODE is to move young women from access to agency: from simply consuming technology to understanding it, questioning it, creating with it and ultimately helping govern and shape it. The United Nations estimates that Artificial Intelligence could help accelerate progress on nearly 80% of the Sustainable Development Goals — but Latin America and the Caribbean, which hold 6.6% of global GDP, receive only 1.12% of global AI investment.
“The question is not simply how AI can advance the Sustainable Development Goals. It is who gets to build the AI solutions. If women and girls are absent from the design of these technologies, we risk solving global problems with only half of the world’s intelligence, experience and imagination.”
— Lady Mariéme Jamme, Founder & CEO, iamtheCODE
More Than a Hackathon
Over the two days, participants will work alongside an international and Chilean community of mentors, speakers, technology experts and leaders. They will use AI and digital tools to explore solutions linked to the Sustainable Development Goals — from personalising girls’ learning and exposing gender gaps in pay and public services (SDG 5), to building businesses and digital livelihoods (SDG 8), to analysing local climate data to protect communities from wildfire and water shortage (SDG 13) — while developing confidence, leadership, collaboration and entrepreneurial thinking.
Participants will also gain access to further learning through the iamtheCODE ecosystem, including internationally recognised courses and certifications, so the experience continues beyond the two-day event. Lady Mariéme will personally mentor and engage with participants throughout the programme.
“Sometimes one conversation, one mentor or one opportunity can completely change the direction of a young woman’s life. I know this because education and technology changed mine.”
“I want every girl who walks into this hackathon to leave understanding that her circumstances do not determine her future. She can become an engineer, an AI builder, an entrepreneur, a policymaker or create something none of us has imagined yet.”
— Lady Mariéme Jamme, Founder & CEO, iamtheCODE
Chile Becomes iamtheCODE’s 90th Country
The Chile launch forms part of iamtheCODE’s global mission to ensure that girls and young women, particularly those historically excluded from technology have the skills and opportunities necessary to participate in the digital economy. The movement has now impacted more than 610,000 people worldwide, from Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya to the favelas of Brazil and was awarded the ITU WSIS Prize in 2026 in recognition of a decade of work in digital inclusion.
The event is being delivered in partnership with UNDP and UNESCO, supported by ITU, Talento Digital and hosted by INCAP. For Lady Mariéme, bringing iamtheCODE to Chile is not intended to be a one-off intervention.
“This is the beginning, not the end. I hope that some of the girls we meet in Santiago this week will become the women building Chile’s AI companies, designing its public policies, creating technologies and mentoring the girls who come after them.”
— Lady Mariéme Jamme, Founder & CEO, iamtheCODE
In June 2026 IamtheCODE signed an MOU with Fundacion Chile to deliver a scholarship program in Chile, in partnership with Talento Digital para Chile. iamtheCODE is making available to Talento Digital para Chile in initial 2,000 scholarships which will allow their beneficiaries to access more than 67,000 courses on iamtheCODE’s Global Digital Learning Platform to advance digital, professional, and employability skills. This initiative seeks to promote continuous learning, skills updating, and access to new professional development opportunities for graduates of training programs run by Talento Digital para Chile, with a planned scale up of scholarship program to reach more learners by the end of 2026.
About Lady Mariéme Jamme
Lady Mariéme Jamme is a Senegalese-born British businesswoman, technology pioneer and Founder of iamtheCODE. She serves as Special Envoy for Technology and AI to the Government of South Africa under the Ministry of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, a 2026 ITU WSIS Prize Winner in the E-employment category and is an alumna of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders. Having overcome extraordinary barriers in her own early life, she has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of technology, education, entrepreneurship and social impact. Her work is rooted in a simple conviction: where a girl starts in life should never determine where she finishes.
About iamtheCODE
iamtheCODE is the first African-led global movement mobilising governments, businesses, philanthropic organisations, international institutions and civil society to advance STEAMD education — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics and Design — for girls and young women. First announced at the United Nations in 2015, the organisation is working towards an ambitious global goal of equipping one million women and girls with coding and future-ready skills by 2030. With the launch of iamtheCODE Chile, the movement now reaches 90 countries worldwide. iamtheCODE Foundation is a registered UK charity, number 1190134. www.iamthecode.org
Media Contact
Interviews with Lady Mariéme Jamme, participants and partner representatives available on request. High-resolution photography and b-roll available.
iamtheCODE Communications Team
www.iamthecode.org
socialmedia@iamthecode.org