TECHNOLOGY: Toward a Women-centred African Information Society

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

HARARE, Nov 2 1999 (IPS) - Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will launch an Internet discussion forum later this month that will allow African women to harness information technology as a tool for development.

Known as the Beijing-Plus-Five Women’s Networking Initiative it forms part of the follow-up process of the UN women’s conference held in the Chinese capital five years ago and will begin operating during the African Regional Conference on Women in Addis Ababa, Nov 22-27.

“Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) exist within a context of domination and inequality between men and women, youth and adults,” notes the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). “Women already are marginalized in all sectors – access to credit, education, land – and this marginalization expresses itself in all areas of ICTs.”

ECA recently convened the first African Development Forum which brought together political leaders, NGOs and the private sector to develop an African-driven development agenda.

The Commission says that one of the key development issues confronting Africa is in the area of information technology and, in that area, women remain at the bottom of the pile.

“The real question for us now is how? How will Africa join the global economy?” notes ECA’s Karima Bounemra Ben Soltane.

The African Development Forum, held Oct 25-29, agreed that more attention was needed to the question of including women in all decision-making processes concerning ICT’s. Another issue high on the list should be the development of applications, products and services that respond to the needs of women – for example in the informal sector which is dominated by women.

There also is a desperate need to educate young girls, particularly in the scientific and technical fields, the forum said.

But the challenges to universal access are daunting: many Africans have never even made a phone call, let alone surfed the World Wide Web. There are only about 100,000 dial-up Internet accounts for 750 million people (excluding South Africa).

Internet Service Providers usually are concentrated in the capital cities making an Internet call a costly exercise for the majority who live in rural areas of Africa.

Communications experts point to the major problem of a lack of telephone lines in the continent. If North Africa and South Africa are not counted, there are only about 3 million lines to be shared among 600 million people.

Another gloomy African statistic is that only 2.5 percent of all the world’s television sets are shared among 13 percent of the world’s population.

“In Africa there are about three times as many TV sets as telephone lines,” notes professor Heather Hudson of the University of San Fransisco. “This ratio indicates that there is a considerable disposable income available to spend on communications, even in low income countries.

“The low computer penetration is likely due, not only to low incomes and lack of electricity but also to low literacy levels.”

Fay Chung director of UNESCOs International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa concurs: “Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from low enrolments at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Africa’s enrolments at tertiary level are the lowest in the world à Moreover women students comprise only a third of the whole.”

Net enrolment at primary school level was around 61 percent for boys and 57 percent for girls during the 1993-95 period. At secondary level the situation was worse, with only 9 African countries having achieved secondary education for over 50 percent for both sexes.

Despite the odds facing them, African women’s organizations have been some of the proactive players in democratizing access to the information society.

To bridge the skills gap, organizations such as Abantu for Development, the Southern African Non-Governmental Organisation Network (SangoNet), Baobab and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) have started conducting electronic communications training for women’s groups.

Although no statistics are available this has seen an increase in the number of women’s organizations experimenting with on-line conferences, mailing lists and web-sites creating alternative communication channels to support their campaigns, defend their rights, and diffuse their own forms of representation notes ECA.

For instance a Senegalese woman, unable to find data locally on the number of women ministers in African governments, contacted the international APC women’s network through its mailing list. A woman in Geneva with access to UN agency information was able to fax relevant information to Senegal, which was used to support advocacy concerning women’s participation in African governments.

South Africa’s Women’s Net, a project of SangoNet and the country’s Commission on Gender Equality is an important site of locally generated information and discussion on gender issues. It makes itself available from a web site as a friendly and accessible source.

The Women Farmers Association of Nigeria’s (WOFAN) has access to email and acts as a focal point for NGOs in and around Kano in Northern Nigeria. WOFAN is plays the role of an information broker for its affiliates and other NGOs and uses information as resource and training material for workshops and seminars.

As part of the African Information Society Initiative adopted by African government leaders in 1996, policy-makers acknowledge that for ICTs to be an empowering tool for development it is essential that women participate effectively.

So, the launching of the Beijing-plus-Five Women’s Networking Initiative is launched, it will be another small but significant step toward ensuring that ICTs are used in enhancing African women’s capacity to speak out and support one another.