Bridging the Gender Digital Divide

Yet, as statistics describing the growing digital divide demonstrate, women and girls are at particular risk for exclusion from opportunities presented by ICT to secure better livelihoods and other rights.

The particular opportunities presented by ICT as means to foster women's economic security and rights in Africa, while being tested on a small scale in the region, remain largely untapped. Constraints of infrastructure, cost and content as well as gender biases in the use and development of ICT constitute significant barriers to use for most individual entrepreneurs or micro- enterprises. Indeed, as the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan emphasized in his message to the International Chamber of Commerce on October 30, 2020, "One key question for (you) to consider is to liberate the entrepreneurial energies of Africa's people, and how to promote foreign investment in African countries, in particular the least developed among them".

UNIFEM and its partners recognize that there is a wealth of untapped expertise among Africans in the Diaspora, particularly in the private sector, who could make a significant difference in closing the digital divide. Partnerships combining the know-how and outreach of agencies such as UNIFEM and its partners, with those companies and entrepreneurs who are developing and financing ICT development and deployment open up new avenues for tackling the feminization of poverty. UNIFEM intends to use the knowledge and expertise of Africans in the Diaspora to "liberate the entrepreneurial energies" of African women.

In January 2020 in New York, UNIFEM launched its Digital Diaspora initiative to build strategic partnerships between African IT entrepreneurs in the Diaspora and women's organizations and business associations in Africa. The initiative is aimed at harnessing the financial resources, IT and business expertise of Africans in the Diaspora to tackle the challenges of feminized poverty. It seeks to undertake projects that empower women economically through capacity building in the use of ICTs, identifying business opportunities, creating business partnerships, and providing access to finance as well as building the knowledge-base on ICTs for poverty alleviation.

The initiative is guided by a Global Advisory Committee (GAC) comprised of African ICT entrepreneurs from the Diaspora, ICT experts and representatives of the private sector and the UN system. A comprehensive programme to address the gender digital divide in Africa has been prepared with advise from the GAC and will form the framework for action under the initiative. Partnership with the UN ICT Task Force, Digital Partners and Gruppo Cerfe has been forged in the June 2020 launch of a complementary intiative, the Digital Diaspora Network Africa (DDNA), with chapters in North America and Europe . A gender caucus including African women's groups and organizations in the field of ICT has also been forged to catalyze women's rights and organizing around the preparatory processes of the World Summit of the information Society (WSIS).

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which the UN General Assembly has endorsed at its 57th session as the framework for the international community support to Africa, recognizes ICT as one of the priority sectors for Africa's development, and entrusts African governments to promote the role of women in society and economic development.

In this context, UNIFEM, UNDP, the Office of the Special Coordinator for Africa and the Least Developed Countries (OSCAL), the UN ICT Task Force and the UN Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) in collaboration with the Government of Uganda, plan to launch the initiative in Africa on the occasion of the second meeting of the Global Advisory Committee.

The outcome of the meeting in Kampala will be presented during the upcoming meeting of the UN ICT Taskforce, in September 2020, and will inform the ongoing process of the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS).

Objectives

The main objective of the meeting is to launch the programme of action of the Digital Diaspora Initiative in Africa, expanding the constituency of support by bringing on board other stakeholders from governments, civil society, donors and the private sector; and forging synergy between the efforts of the GAC, DDNA and the Gender Caucus of the WSIS.

More specifically, it is intended to:

• Provide an opportunity for participants to learn from some innovative approaches to using ICT for gender responsive poverty eradication and development in Uganda.
• Explore the specificity of the gender digital divide in Africa and learn about strategies and experiences that have been used to enhance women's access to ICT and IT female entrepreneurship in Africa;
• Share information and ideas about the programme for bridging the gender digital divide through strategic partnerships with a wider audience;
• Expand partnership opportunities with governments, civil society organizations, the private sector, donors and UN Agencies towards implementing the initiative.

Expected outcomes

• Initiative launched in Africa, with a wider constituency of support at the regional level
• Implementation plan for the programme "Bridging the Digital Divide through Strategic Partnerships" outlined
• Identified and shared issues on the use of ICT in the empowerment of women and the eradication of poverty in Africa
• Identified partners for specific programmes at regional, sub regional and national levels, including within UN agencies, civil society organisations, private sector and governments
• Linkages and partnerships forged between GAC members, African Governments and African women's organizations active in the field of gender and technology;

The meeting provides a special opportunity to build partnerships between Ugandan local ICT initiatives and the African Diaspora, as well as enhance gender responsiveness of poverty eradication efforts for Sustainable Human Development in Uganda. The expected outcomes for the host country are identified as follows:

Having made considerable progress in the fight against poverty, Uganda can consolidate these achievements through taking the lead in the use of ICT as a tool for development through addressing gender concerns.

Create an Africa wide partnership using the Africa Diaspora as an engine of bridging the gender digital gap.

Define a wide participation to galvanize the local potential to interface with Diaspora ICT experts and entrepreneurs to enrich the local ICT outlook and utility and at the same time procure strategic partnerships and collaboration with other development partners.

This Article was first published by Wougnet