Women and ICT: challenges and opportunities on the road to Tunis/"Femmes et TIC": defis et opportunites sur la route de Tunis.

• Author: Oguttu, Juliet Were
• Position: NEWS/INFORMATION

This is a summary report of a workshop held from 20th-22nd October 2004 at Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge, Arusha--Tanzania.

Introduction

The idea of the workshop was to chart an Eastern Africa route to Tunis and thereafter for the Information Society, through regional consultations and meetings where the issues hindering women' s access, use, adoption, adaptation and development of ICTs in the region could be discussed, and examples of good practices would be shared and/or showcased.

The 3-day conference welcomed 50 delegates mainly from Eastern Africa and a few from southern, western and northern Africa. The team came together to share experiences and exchange ideas on the critical question of women and ICTs in Africa.

Presentations by gender and ICT experts

Seven presentations were made on the opening day of the conference. Mr. Harry Hare, from the private sector (AITEC Tanzania), who was the local focal point of the organising committee, spelt the conference objectives as: networking, knowledge sharing, exchange of ideas and identification of opportunities. Showcasing of best practices on use of ICTs for social economic transformation, particularly for women, was also expected to take place.

In her welcome remarks, Ruth Ochieng, Coordinator of WSIS Gender Caucus East Africa region, underscored the importance of identifying the missing finks between development, ICTs and gender. She appreciated the important role played by women in economic development all over Africa, and observed that women still do not enjoy the right to communicate as much as men do especially in rural areas. She called for the situation to be remedied by making concrete and genuine plans in the development of the information society. She invited the delegates to be critical in the interrogation of how ICTs will help Africa position itself, and its concerns in developing an African Information Society for the benefit of the African people. It was critical she said to bring women's recommendations for ICTs development to the global agenda of the Information society.

Looking back and looking ahead:

Eva Rathgeber, Professor and expert on Gender and ICTs who has carried out extensive work on the continent, presented a brief history of the WSIS Gender Caucus and how it has managed working alongside other organizations with similar goals, to place gender issues within WSIS process and documents.

Gender, ICTs, and Information Society:

Sophia Huyer gave a global sweep of issues of women, technology and social development. She gave a perspective on how women have been viewed in relation to ICTs and the challenges they have had to reduce the gap in access and use of ICTs. She underlined that in most cases where women access ICTs, it is usually upper class women who do so, making the emphasis on equality imperative.

Millennium Development Goals, ICTs and Women:

Hendrica Okondo of UNIFEM-Somalia gave a brief of the MDGs and their relation to ICTs, suggesting that while governments recognize the role of ICTs, this recognition was not adequately represented in government agendas.

She cited the example of the Great Lakes meeting in Kigali where some delegates did not appreciate the need to include ICTs in the final document.

Tanzanian Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Hon. Dr Maua Daflari, who opened the conference, shared the progress currently being made by the Tanzanian government in ICT policy making. She pointed out that the ICT policy published in March 2003 demonstrated government's commitment to ICTs. She urged delegates to come up with creative ideas of interventions and recommendations, which will help women use ICTs for their benefit and that of the community.

Prof. Eva Rathgeber, in her keynote address entitled "Hype or Reality? Can ICTs Leapfrog Basic Education in developing countries," suggested that Africa needs to do more than signing international agreements to achieve universal education. Noting that the right to education was a fundamental right, she also recognized education as an effective means for societal participation that would make the world information society a reality. While appreciating that Africa has other more pressing problems such as...