Two African women, one being from South Africa, have become the first recipients of the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship for outstanding contributions and leadership in computer science.

South African Sinini Ncube, a masters student at Rhodes University and Kenyan born Shikoh Gitau, a doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town (UCT), have both won the scholarship and each will receive a cash prize of R67,000 and an opportunity to visit Google’s engineering facility in Zurich, Switzerland. They’ll also participate in workshops, panel discussions, breakout sessions and variety of social activities.

Ncube and Gitau are the first sub-Saharan students to receive the award, which is open to applicants from Europe, the Middle East and, for the first time in 2010, Africa – provided they are women.

Ncube, for her master’s thesis in computer science, is developing a method of visualising outbreaks of zoonotic diseases, which are transferred from animals to humans and vice versa, using a web-based user interface.

The technology, Ncube hopes, will help to contain outbreaks of diseases such as avian flu and anthrax and improve veterinary service delivery in South Africa and in its neighbouring countries.

Google established the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2004, with the aim of encouraging women to choose a career in technology and computing, and then excel in it.

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