Girl Summit 2014: The long term view of fulfilling potential and educational opportunities

Today marks the launch of the first Girl Summit in London, to raise awareness for the global campaign against FGM and the forced marriage of girls and young women. The summit is a major milestone in a long journey of promoting these causes by a range of NGO’s including Plan UK and the NSPCC, amongst others. The event has the backing of the UK government’s Department for International Development, who have given considerable support including moves to establish policy and to add strength to the UK’s position in condemning these abhorrent practices.

One of the key points of the summit is to highlight the long-term view of the social benefits to women and girls of bringing an end to these procedures and activities, by providing them with the opportunity to fulfill their true potential in society in their own right rather than be controlled, both physically and socially. The fight against FGM is clearly not just a case of preventing this cruel and appalling practice and the long-term physical and psychological harm it can cause, but coupled with preventing forced early marriage, it is a case of restoring pride and self-esteem, while working towards a point at which girls can look forward to a future with real possibilities of personal development, through making their own fundamental choices about their lives. Pursuing a structured education for instance, should be a right and a viable option rather than having their lives controlled and being led into forced marriage arrangements. When girls and young women in the communities concerned are able to take back control in this way rather than be controlled, the resulting rewards of educational attainment can provide huge benefits to them as well as their whole community, through greater employment opportunities and ultimately greater economic stability.

In the spirit of celebrating the concept of promoting opportunity for women and girls in some of the world’s more challenging cultural environments, and in the spirit of one of main themes of this blog – that is, highlighting where technology, innovation and education are applied to support and improve people’s lives in developing nations – my ‘tribute’ to today’s special event is to look at two recent ‘good news’ stories that focus on the rise of women and girls through technology and education, in South Africa and Kenya.

Digital learning programme for rural Kenyan girls

According to Vincent Matinde’s recent story on the itwebafrica.com website, a project is in place to provide digital learning to 25,000 girls in rural Kenya. ‘Project iMlango’ will provide the necessary computers and high-speed internet needed to connect 195 rural schools so that the girls can be educated within their communities. The scheme is supported by several UK companies (Avanti, sQuid, Whizz Education and Camara Education) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

Lynne Featherstone, International Development Minister for DFID is quoted in the article, as she draws a direct connection between the causes of today’s Girl Summit and the planned programme:

“…Education is vital to helping improve the life chances of millions of marginalised girls and protecting them from harmful practices like child and forced marriage…”

The full article can be viewed here:

Rural Kenyan girls to get e-learning boost
http://www.itwebafrica.com/ict-and-governance/256-kenya/233244-rural-kenyan-girls-to-get-e-learning-boost

‘Girls Invent Tomorrow’: Mentoring South African girls in computer skills

A new initiative to provide IT training and computing skills to girls in South Africa has been launched as part of the African EduWeek conference at the Sandron Convention Centre in Johannesburg. As reported in Arthur Goldstruck’s insightful article in the South African Business Daily Live website, the Intel-sponsored ‘Girls Invent Tomorrow’ workshop aims to provide as much emphasis on computer education as to the supply of IT hardware and equipment to schools. Combined with another Intel-backed scheme, the ‘She Will Connect’ project which is committed to bridging the digital divide by expanding the digital literacy skills of young women in emerging countries, the two projects aim to avoid the mistakes made with previous concepts of this nature, where resources were poured in to providing expensive equipment whilst training and educational resources were neglected, resulting in much of the investment in ‘kit’ being wasted and underused.

As quoted in the article, Thabani Khube, corporate affairs director for Intel South Africa explains Intel’s position, rationalising their sense of corporate social responsibility in relation to the aim to prioritise education and training as much as physical investment in technology:

“…Our approach is to change mindsets….In most corporate social investment, technology deployment is about ticking a box and then moving on. At Intel, education is a huge focus in itself…”

The complete article can be viewed here:

SIGN POST: A generation of IT girls on the rise
http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2014/07/20/sign-post-a-generation-of-it-girls-on-the-rise

Reducing the gender gap in access to ICT: some African initiatives towards change

In March of this year, the ITU and UNESCO-sponsored Broadband Commission for Digital Development met in Mexico City to endorse a new report coordinated by UNESCO, entitled ‘Technology, Broadband and Education: Advancing the Education for All Agenda’.

At the meeting, an ambitious target was set to reduce the gender gap that persists in terms of access and use of the internet, with a new advocacy target: “…to ensure gender equality in broadband access by 2220..”. This is against the backdrop of general recognition that a huge amount of work is required if the Millennium Development Goals of ‘Universal Primary Education’ and ‘Education for All’ are to be achieved. As an article from the UNESCO website on the meeting in March states:-

‘…Less than three years away from the target date for achieving these goals, 61 million children of primary-school age, and a further 71 million of lower secondary-school age, are not in school. In addition, close to 793 million adults – 64% of them women – lack literacy skills, with the lowest rates in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia…’

The article continues with reference to data that was presented at the meeting, highlighting a 25% disparity between men and women in terms of those who used the internet, with the figure being far greater in Sub-Saharan Africa, going up to 45%.

Having these stats to hand is hardly necessary to support the argument that much more needs to be done to close the gender gap – or gender divide (as part of the wider ‘digital divide’), in terms of the number of women in comparison to men who have access to the internet, training in ICT and access to ICT resources in developing countries. Thankfully there seems to be far more global recognition that the existing barriers to opportunity afforded to women in these communities, in terms of career development, social empowerment and global self-expression, will continue to perpetuate without a considerable improvement in the level of accessthey have to ICT education and resources.

Here I have highlighted a few examples of some of the projects and initiatives which have tried to tackle these inequalities, in various communities across Africa, which have been featured in the press in the past year.

Akirachix Training Project: Teaching ICT to high school girls from the slums of Nairobi

“Currently, our country is basking in recognition and appreciation of a robust tech. scene, but we only have a handful of women making an impact in this field”

These are the words of Linda Kamau, Akirachix Training Project Lead, in an article on their work in Nairobi in the BizTech Africa website in May of this year. Akirachix are an all-girl ICT organisation who started offering ICT training to a small group of girls from the slums of Nairobi back in 2010, with the project continuing to develop since then. She goes on to explain how they try to help with other issues as part of the initiative, that may be acting as an obstacle to students continued participation in the scheme:

“Teaching the girls about computers and building their appreciation of science is one thing, but we cannot achieve much when they have to withdraw from class to attend to personal issues. We therefore ensure that we facilitate school attendance with things like bus fare so that they don’t miss class, and give them personal effects for proper hygiene…”

As the article explains, in the coming year since publication the group were intent on further enhancing the curricula they could offer to students to include training in financial literacy and psychological support, with a view to gaining recognition and further input from stakeholders such as the Kenya National Examinations Council in the future.

Senegal: Aiming to educate 100 girls in ICT each year

This is the aim of Bitilokho NDiaye, Technical Consultant in charge of Gender Issues at the Senegal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, from an interview with The Soleil earlier this year.

In the interview, reported online in the Afrique IT News website in April, Bitilokho explained how they want to “…encourage computer access to women by giving them low-cost computers so that they can be trained in communications…” with the aim of “…promoting female entrepreneurship by making sure that that there are SME headed by women.” Summing up the interview, she explained that the scheme had been a success so far, and hoped to present those who had participated and the projects they had undertaken in ICT since attending the training course.

Telecentre Women Campaign: Joint Scheme in Rwanda, Kenya and Zambia to encourage women to embrace technology through ICT training

As reported on the telecentre.org blog last month, since July the Rwanda Telecentre Network (RTN) Southern Africa Telecentre Network (SATNET) and KenTel have been implementing a digital literacy program of training for women in both rural and urban communities. Working in conjunction with Microsoft, the aim if the initiative as explained in the article is to:

‘…empower disadvantaged community women with knowledge of ICTs for personal growth and expanded opportunities for better lives. Hence boost countries’ aspirations of transforming from an agricultural-based economy to a knowledge-based one….’

One of the students who attended the training explained how she was able to benefit from it with the running of the cooperative of 25 women she was involved in, which produced sweaters and scarves:

“we can now use Microsoft Excel to calculate our profits, book keeping, design a flyer to market our product using Ms Word, and prepare a presentation Powerpoint…”

Chipatala Cha Pa Foni (CCPF): Mobile phone-based initiative in Malawi aims to help women responsible for sourcing medical services and facilities for their family and communities

An article earlier this month in the All Africa website, referencing the Malawi News Agency, explains how a recent development is helping women in rural areas of Malawi (with particular reference to the Nkhotakota region) in their search for medical services and health advice, a requirement that affects whole communities but inevitably falls to women to provide a solution for them.

Chipatala Cha Pa Foni (CCPF), which means ‘Health Centre By Phone’ in English, is a scheme that embraces mobile ICT to specifically help those women who have young children, are pregnant or of child-bearing age,  by provided them with vital healthcare information regarding maternal, neonatal and child-health concerns via their mobile phones.

The result of a competition jointly run by the Malawi Ministry of Health and global NGOs Concern Worldwide and Village Reach, the scheme uses contracts between Village Reach and mobile provider Airtel as its technology platform. Through this integration of mobile technology, it has been possible to extend the reach of existing women’s healthcare education programmes to those who need them most.

Village Reach Program Manager Zachanak Jezman explains the CCPF initiative in more detail:

“CCPF has two components, the first one being a toll free case management hotline which allows women of child bearing age, pregnant women and women of under-five children to talk directly to health workers by dialing 54747 on any Airtel number.

“The second component allows the three groups of targeted women to register with CCPF to receive timely and specialized tips and reminders on healthy information,” he said.

During the launch of CCPF in Nkhotakota, the article quotes National Chairman for the Presidential Initiative on Safe Motherhood, Senior Chief Kwataine as he described the launch:

“…a special day for the three targeted groups of women…CCPF is one way of promoting safe motherhood. It provides a platform to interact with (a health) worker for a long period without actually going to the (health) facility…Women who have reservations about going (to health a facility) will also be served. It’s up to us to use it so that Malawi should continue doing well on maternal health…”