TECHNOLOGY-AFRICA: Access to Computers Remain a Distant Dream for Women

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Oct 16 2003 (IPS) - At 50, Nyende Namisi, a peasant farmer in rural western Kenya, has never seen a computer before.

Efforts by an empowerment lobby group to introduce her to one have hit a snag. She maintains that she is well past using such a device and prefers her children to be taught instead.

"I think this is not my world. It is for the younger generation," she says. Efforts by the group to talk her into training sessions have not borne any fruit. Others are not so lucky like Namisi, who has declined an offer to use computer.

Millions of women in rural sub-Saharan Africa have no access to Information Communication Technology (ICTs), particularly computer technologies like internet and e-mail.

That is why the theme for this year’s World Rural Women’s Day celebrated Oct. 15 focused on deficiency of communication facilities in the rural set-up and their inaccessibility to women.

Rural women, who number about 2 billion, represent more than a quarter of the world’s population. A large number of them, particularly from sub-Saharan Africa, have no access to computers.

Women are marginal users of ICTs. On average 25 percent of them, mainly in urban settings, use telephones, radios, computers with access to internet and e-mail. These facilities are lacking in rural areas where utilisation is almost zero percent.

"Rural women need to access information technology just as much as those in the urban areas," says Rose Arungu, executive director of Kenya’s Maendeleo ya Wanawake (Development for Women).

Women, she says, are always in constant communication with one another, at household and community level.

"Women are less exposed to information technologies because their lives are woven around household chores, in the process they lose out on ICTs. Their role as mothers, wives, members of community do not accord them time to access information," Arungu notes.

Women are also handicapped by poverty and low literacy levels. "They cannot afford to spend money on information technologies. Besides, their illiteracy level needs to be countered by formal education," says Nancy Mburu, managing director of Comcyber services, a computer service company in Nairobi.

Statistics indicates that the number of women living in poverty has doubled since 1970 and that women represent two-thirds of all illiterate Kenyans.

Mburu’s organisation is lobbying the government to ensure gender balance in access to ICTs by establishing telecentres and providing information services to all parts of the country, including the remotest.

Mburu says men are better recipients of information technology because they have an upper hand when it comes to finances and education.

In a recent study carried out in Kampala, Uganda on the use of telephone, internet, photocopy and typesetter, women constituted only 31 percent of the information users, while male users accounted for 68.9 percent.

In Senegal, a similar study revealed that male users accounted for 71.5 percent, while female users 28.5 percent.

Campaigners maintain that bridging this gap would promote equitable development.

They say women’s empowerment is the key to development. "Women should be sensitised about the power of ICTs. And this can be done by providing them with education and employment among other things," notes Wambui Kanyi, programmes coordinator of the Nairobi-based Collaborative Centre for Gender and Development.

This view is shared by Women’s World Summit Foundation, initiators of the World Rural Women’s Day. "ICTs must become a tool for your empowerment and development and not increase your marginalisation," says the Foundation in a statement.

Kanyi appeals to governments to come up with policies that seek to bridge gender gaps. Such measures, she says, should cover all sectors including communication technology.

Her remarks come in the wake of a proposal on Oct. 9, by members of Kenya’s parliament to establish a gender commission to ensure equity in national development.

Campaigners in Kenya envisage an increase in women accessibility to ICTs, which will be monitored by the proposed National Commission on Gender and Development.

Last year, a group of women representatives in the East Africa Legislative Assembly in Arusha, Tanzania, committed themselves to adopting a gender policy to cover the East African nations of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

This policy, the women hope, will address gender imbalances in accessing ICTs.