Document(s) 9 of 12

Since the first United Nations World Conference on Women in Mexico, in 1975, women’s opportunities for human-resource development have improved globally. Thanks to the efforts of individual countries and the international community, spectacular progress has been made in the fields of health and nutrition, education, childbirth, and rights. However, despite these well-known successes, the appraisal prepared for the Beijing conference revealed that the period 1985–95 showed a certain stagnation, if not a decline, in progress, as a result of the economic, political, and social turbulence of that decade.

In Africa, women’s living conditions have worsened, and their incomes have diminished. Depending on the region, they have lost social gains, become victims of poverty and unemployment, experienced new forms of exclusion, and become more vulnerable. As well, institutional, legal, socioeconomic, and cultural constraints, which women have been unable to escape in any country, have denied them access to opportunities that are available to men. Women have understood that the acquisition of knowledge constitutes the first stage in any process of change, be it social, economic, cultural, or politicolegal. Information is the catalyst, the driving force, and the product of such evolutionary processes of change. Good information flow is an integral part of development. To promote sustainable development, therefore, governments should facilitate women’s access to information and allow them to contribute to economic growth. Within this framework, it would be essential to free women’s productive potential by adopting specific measures to give women access to information, training, technology, and technical assistance.

Information technology, info highways, information products and services etc. are concepts and realities that have become unavoidable for anyone involved in the issues of development. In tandem with these developments, globalization and worldwide processes of economic change are at work in all sectors of activity throughout the world. Developing countries should not be kept out of the information revolution. In fact, the emergence of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially those with Internet connections, is a fantastic opportunity that women should seize. Such ICTs are choice tools for development. The Internet itself is likely to become a principal instrument, rather than an accessory, of economic and social renewal.

Development aid, whether bilateral or multilateral, has in every case been changed profoundly, as one must now take into consideration the new ICTs and the lightning progress the Internet is making throughout the world. If African countries do not participate in this world revolution, the gap between African and industrialized countries will widen, and the continent will be even more marginalized. Participating in this revolution implies calling on the active forces of both women and men, without restriction.

Women represent slightly more than half of Africa’s population. One cannot therefore talk of development without including women. The awareness created recently among African women, along with their emancipation, has brought them slowly out of the yoke that tradition and society had reserved for them and caused them to become more interested in sectors hitherto considered the reserve of men. Sensitizing women and promoting their access to ICTs would give them the means to assert their emancipation, as well as the wherewithal to ensure their economic independence and take control of their contribution to the economy.

The African woman in her sociocultural context

In Africa, women do not live in isolation. Most women (married or single) live in households and bear enormous responsibilities for their families. They are the backbone of small-scale agricultural holdings; they constitute an important reservoir of wage-earning agricultural labour; and they play key roles as traders in markets and distributors in their communities.

Although women are in the majority, they have less access than men to the various levels of formal education, owing to the constraints of an aggressive social environment. This imbalance at all levels is due to several sociological factors: parents show little interest in having their daughters pursue long-term studies; all over the place, girls are victims of aggression in a society in which traditional values are crumbling; and quickly earned money is becoming the sole norm of social success. Outside of these subjective factors, demands on girls’ labour, young girls’ having to work, early pregnancies, and promiscuity are factor in girls’ school failures. Low levels of schooling, illiteracy, and lack of exposure and access to training disproportionately affect women. In most developing countries, women are less educated than men: in Africa 58% of girls attend primary school, but the figure is 73% for boys.

To alleviate these problems, governments should help to create a generation of literate young girls and women who can use ICTs. Knowing how to read, write, and count contributes greatly to helping women overcome their fears. By simply learning to read a weighing machine and check what is written in the register, they can verify their relations with surrounding institutions. Furthermore, their education should be functional, that is, centred on immediately usable knowledge, such as the ability to keep a ledger (with entries of debits and credits, harvest deliveries, etc.) and to read simple, common-knowledge reading materials.

Training

Women’s access to training is limited in the rural areas because all training is given in far-off centres. Women should receive training in their villages, in the language they prefer, and in accordance with a schedule convenient to them. Experience shows that women who receive training in a village are often better motivated and then more willing to take a course at a centre. Women who wish to have a job or create a microenterprise would require training in technical competencies or simple management practices. They should receive this type of training in conjunction with training in credit and commercialization procedures, health, environmental protection, and other related subjects.

Governments can render a precious service to women and young girls (the women of tomorrow) by encouraging national educational institutions to introduce technical subjects into the school syllabuses — subjects such as agriculture, market gardening, livestock rearing, artisanal transformation of agricultural products, elementary accounts, and management. Teachers might use a good portion of the teaching and popularization materials drawn up within such projects, and popularizers might make visits to local schools.

Information

It goes without saying that women who are not informed about a resource or new initiative cannot benefit from it. The old adage that “information is power” is still true, but women are often unaware of the services available to them. The new information technologies can considerably widen access to information and communication and advance and accelerate sustainable development. Notable among this perspective’s implications is that women’s attitudes toward information and its use will give way to cultural practices in which being informed and informing become simple reflex actions. Although few studies have been done on the relationships between information, development, and science and technology (S&T), the information sector has an influence on what the women of developing countries learn about S&T, and learning mechanisms also become more and more important. ICTs have the potential to, above all, improve women’s learning, interaction, and participation.

The policy-formulation process should reformulate and adapt new approaches in favour of sexual equality to encourage women’s and communities’ total participation in the conception and management of all development initiatives in the ICT sector. This process should also encourage the media to respond more effectively to women’s needs and interests and increase women’s access to S&T information and other relevant knowledge. As we shall see below, women have specific and fairly precise information needs.

The specific information needs of women

Because of previous results, especially in matters of rights and education, and because of the almost international awareness of the need to improve women’s quality of life, women’s information needs are recognized in practically all spheres of social life:

• In education — African women need at least a minimum basic education that, in the worst-case scenario, would enable them to read and write their names and to distinguish between the necessary and the superfluous and between good and evil. This basic education should also enable women to actualize their traditional knowledge and be more involved in improving their conditions of life. Women who cannot move far should have the opportunity to pursue their education by correspondence. Teachers might also instruct rural women in their own mother tongues. Training centres should facilitate attendance for women who are breast-feeding. This tolerant attitude would encourage many women to participate in training sessions and would help to reduce or even eliminate illiteracy.

• In health — Women need to receive general information on the elementary rules of hygiene. Well-informed women can eventually

 
• Avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases (consider the AIDS phenomenon, for example) that are decimating their ranks;
 
• Reduce early pregnancies and thus reduce infant and even maternal mortality;
 
• Adopt and practice family planning techniques and reduce birth rates; and
 
• Treat minor diseases without always resorting to doctors’ services, which are in some places difficult to access and expensive.

 
• In agriculture — To ensure food security, women can take measures to improve seed selection and their cultivation, irrigation, and fallowing techniques. They can use information on appropriate technologies to harvest and conserve food crops.

• In the environment — Women need information to avoid environmental crises and disasters. With adequate warning, women can take steps to prepare for drought, floods, etc. They can also learn techniques to conserve the environment and the soil and methods to make the environment and the soil more profitable without destroying them (through bushfires, etc.).

• In law — Women who know their rights and obligations are better able to defend themselves against all types of violence (sexual, physical, social, professional, etc.).

• In the economy — Women need information to improve and reinforce their economic independence through commercial activities, such as information on exchange-rate fluctuations, international market trends, prices of foodstuffs and other commodities on the market, and bank transactions (conditions for obtaining credit, etc.). They might then integrate themselves economically with women of other towns and even other regions.

• In the professions — Women can reinforce their positions with appropriate training. Women who know about the new findings in their areas of specialization can enrol for refresher courses and participate in meetings and seminars to improve their work.

• In society — Women can create associations and professional groups to exchange experiences and knowledge and thus break out of the isolation they often find themselves in.

• In culture — Women need information on their cultures; vestiges of their villages, towns, and country; traditional practices; and modern life. They therefore need libraries.

• In tourism — Information on national, regional, and even world affairs is needed for women to put their everyday lives into perspective and to inspire them to improve their own image vis-à-vis other countries.

• In politics — Decentralization of authority creates a golden opportunity for African women to show what they are made of. Although women are present and significant in diverse national organs of power, one must admit that their progress has been very slow. If they are better informed, they will express themselves almost everywhere, make themselves heard, and participate in the political destinies of their countries. (I note, in passing, that African women are becoming more numerous in the posts of minister, assistant minister, permanent secretary, etc.)

Information centres

People should have appropriate, adaptable, and widely available ICTs at their disposal, especially ICTs related to women’s information needs. Political reform and the creation of economic alternatives will bring the information and communication era to Africa by dissolving the inequalities and disparities in Africa today.

Because information is power and women constitute more than half of the African population, it is essential to free women’s productive potential by taking specific steps to give them access to information. Information centres should be established in rural towns or areas covering more than one village or commune. Women would meet at these centres to discuss issues, with due consideration being given to their realities, such as poverty, and their needs, such as education, water, health, and appropriate environmental technologies. These centres would enable women not only to resolve their problems by themselves but also to open up to the world and have a larger vision of it. They should develop a sort of drug-like dependency on information. These centres should not only be accessible to women but also reflect their perspectives as much as possible.

The following are some priority actions needed to establish a women’s information centre:

• Conduct an area study to collect socioeconomic data and identify information needs (education, family planning, legal matters, etc.);

• Establish the needs of youth and women in the area;

• Define objectives, establish a methodology, and identify beneficiaries;

• Take into consideration the legal requirements for the setup and operations aspects;

• Take infrastructure into account for the choice of techniques, cultural traditions (oral), adapted tools (radio), audiovisual tools (video); and

• Use existing infrastructure (a school, a church, etc.) to make the information centre a concrete reality.

Women have a particularly important role to play in the development of Africa. The image of women presented by the media can either hinder or promote the integration of women into the development process. In the press, women are sometimes presented as sex objects or condemned for their lack of morality. On other occasions, they are presented as strong, productive people who make an appreciable contribution to the well-being of their families and to the development of their country. In summary, women’s media image reflects the conflict between society’s traditional expectations of women and the new roles they are starting to play in modern society.

Women’s contributions range from the sharing of traditional practices within their community to official involvement in the professional information and communication community. Women’s information needs cannot be understood or fulfilled unless the women themselves participate in determining and selecting better mechanisms to spread this information.

In addition, educating women in information management, technology, and policy formulation would make them more aware of their stakes in this areas and enable them to seize, organize, and exchange information for their own ends. Moreover, because female journalists, announcers, and radio and television facilitators speak the same language as other women, they would know better how to inform and sensitize their female audience in matters that preoccupy women. The special way in which women communicate would indicate their unique vision of existence.

Women in such professions as doctor, social worker, nurse, and nutritional and agricultural-extension educator could also be trained to use radio and television as essential teaching aids. By appearing on radio and television programs in the dynamic role of experts, the women in such professions would help to shape new attitudes toward women while contributing to the education of listeners and viewers. Furthermore, the development process will proceed better if information in these vital sectors can be spread more widely and quickly, via radio and television.

Within the framework of the Expanded Immunisation Programme, two Radio Senegal facilitators, armed with microphones and accompanied by six doctors and the head of the village health centre, held a meeting with the village women in Nguekhokh, 75 km east of Dakar (MOHSA 1996). This meeting allowed the villagers to talk freely about their health problems (as they were talking directly to the facilitators). They asked questions about meningitis (a serious problem at the time), pregnancy, babies’ “running stomachs” (diarrhea), ways to stop children from eating green mangoes, etc. The doctors stayed in the background and only intervened when really necessary. Born of the collaboration between the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Environment, Development, Action (ENDA)–Third World, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Ministry of Public Health and Social Action in Senegal, and Radio–Television Senegal, this initiative was intended to restore dynamism to the Expanded Immunisation Programme, “do real proximity radio and create new reflexes in women so that they switch on the radio to get information” (MOHSA 1996).

With financial assistance from the Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation, the Senegalese government intends to create four women-run community radio stations in the regions of Kolda, Podor, Fatick, and Mattan.

Finally, because women make an important contribution to both society and the economy, programs with a focus on their daily lives should be created. One can cite, as examples of topics, information on agriculture, family planning, health and nutrition, trade, and management. In addition to dealing with matters of particular interest to women, a well-slotted radio or television broadcast might help to reduce rural women’s isolation. In summary, if ICTs are used to facilitate the integration of women into development, this would benefit both the women and the country at large.

Active participation in the use and management of ICTs

Networks

The network phenomenon is another aspect of communication. A network is defined as an exchange site or an ideas bank, with members spread throughout the country, region, or even the world. The aim of a network is to facilitate the collection and circulation of experiences and information from several people or organizations. More and more women are organizing themselves into networks to assert themselves in the process of development. Their ambition is to enrich and renew reflection and cooperation in areas concerning women (especially health, agriculture, trade, etc.). With this in mind, they are multiplying discussions with others involved in their socioeconomic emancipation by organizing meetings in various residential areas, towns, and countries, as well as meetings of members from neighbouring regions. These multiple networks support the resolve to build dialogue and a common future that goes beyond the usual professional or regional cleavages.

Women are trying, above all else, to stimulate the most varied exchange of experiences and thoughts in favour of development. The Association of African Communication Professionals (AACP), a framework for reflection and study on women and the media, was created in Dakar, Senegal, in 1984. AACP aims to improve the working conditions of professionals by fighting sexual discrimination in the workplace. AACP proposes to present an image of women that reflects their effective participation in social, economic, political, and cultural life and in development in general. The Ivorian chapter of AACP was created in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, by the Minister for Communications, Madame Danielle Boni Claverie, on 5 December 1996.

An example in another area is the African Network for Support to Feminine Entrepreneurship (ANSFE), created in January 1995 at a business forum in Senegal and organized alongside the Fifth African Regional Conference on Women. ANSFE comprises 469 African members, and its objectives are

• To help its members develop enterprises;

• To promote local products;

• To facilitate access to credit;

• To create conditions that help informal-sector enterprises graduate to small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs); and

• To share experiences with women from other countries.

Economic independence

Because of ICTs, women have made progress toward a certain economic independence and have better access to resources. This is essential to realizing their projects, which cover their needs and those of their families and take into consideration their choices, ensuring their autonomy in matters of marriage and procreation. More and more women, as a result of their growing participation in the job market, are earning an independent income, even if this income is far from corresponding to their actual economic contribution — discrimination in salaries is still strong.

Women are also beginning to access another resource: international aid and credit. Having noted the essential role of women in the fight against poverty, international institutions are redirecting their aid policies to provide financing for women’s activities, especially in the agricultural and small-enterprise sectors, which are considered potential sources of wealth and dynamism. International institutions are following the examples of local banks, which are more and more disposed to financing women’s projects, including even those of the poorest women, as their projects are most likely to have an effect on family members and the community.

Some of the resources that women are increasingly accessing are new techniques, competencies, and qualifications in essential sectors for the future, such as agriculture, ecology, management, and microelectronics. Even if this trend concerns only a minority of women, it opens up promising prospects for independence, reduction of workloads, improved results, and diversification of activities.

Women have also made progress in areas such as autonomy and economic power. They are becoming numerous in the middle- and senior-level cadres of the private sector and constitute a real reservoir of talent in economic policy-making. The proportion of women in the ranks of managers and directors of companies has more than doubled in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, and if only a few are heads of traditional companies, many more are creators of new industries, innovative services, and SMEs — a new type of entrepreneur capable of using new techniques to improve the quality of life, respond to unmet needs and neglected social demands, create new markets and services, and make a profit.

Women and business

The privatization process has affected men and women differently. The conversion of labour from the public sector to the private sector has been detrimental to women all over the world. Nevertheless, they are making surprising breakthroughs by creating and heading up their own modern and prosperous businesses. They are investing in such varied sectors as agriculture, food processing, trade, and artisanship, not to mention industrial cleaning, metal retrieval, ready-made clothes, etc. In my research, many women who created SMEs were inspired by an example from television, the press, or radio. Others say they saw examples on the Internet. Examples of black American women who head up their own business enterprises have influenced more women than one, such as Madame Christine Mugisha, a former English-language teacher at Kabale school, in southwest Uganda, who started a wrapping-paper- and card-making business.

A young Senegalese businesswoman, owner of a tailoring and ready-made clothing shop in Dakar, confirmed that she looks on the Internet for the names of big European shops having sales and travels abroad for these sales, and this is how she is able to buy high-quality goods at competitive prices. I mention in passing that all these female entrepreneurs explore the Internet for joint-venture opportunities and use mobile telephones.

Telecentres

The problem of underemployment and unemployment of women requires the formulation of networks to link women to job opportunities. Women, in search of both an easier mode of communication and financial independence, have also turned to the telecommunications sector.

Witness the proliferation, in both urban and rural areas, of telecentres. Their main service is offering long-distance telephone communications, whose unit cost depends on the country, for example, 100 XOF for 3 minutes in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, etc. (in 1999, 637.48 CFA francs [XOF] = 1 United States dollar [USD]). In addition, telecentres send and receive faxes, and some can consult databases, such as the electronic directory. Their principal advantage is that they give assistance to clients, whether literate or illiterate, who may have difficulties using ICTs. Like all SMEs, these telecentres contribute to the development of other small businesses (women’s preferred sector), directly or indirectly creating employment for young women and thereby reducing unemployment. Furthermore, while facilitating communications and access to information these telecentres can also serve as multipurpose centres for the surrounding populations, addressing people’s educational and health problems, with due consideration given to levels of literacy.

In the final analysis, equipped with computers and a modem, telecentres can serve as access points to the information highway. Moreover, cybercafés are timidly emerging, such as the Metissacana cybercafé in Dakar. The Metissacana, which is co-owned and partly managed by a woman, was created in May 1996. Its motto is “Accessible information for all.” Metissacana’s objective is to circulate information as widely as possible. It has a database on Senegal, a professional electronic directory, and an art gallery, and it organizes events, artistic galas, and fashion shows. Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the cybercafé has a computer team available to show learner internauts how to navigate the web, use e-mail, and enter the Internet’s direct conversation zone.

Women constitute 50% of Metissacana’s clients. Although some have never used a computer keyboard in their lives, all the clients are enthusiastic about the idea of exploring the information highway. According to Mr Michael Mavros, one of the three managers,¹ the Metissacana advocates access to the Internet for all. It undertook a demonstration tour of the villages, using a giant screen to show people that they, too, could have access to the Internet. Each day at the Metissacana, the youth and women use e-mail to communicate with their friends and loved ones outside the country. It is faster, more reliable, and often cheaper than the telecopier or post.

Although women are not in the majority among those who have created telecentres, these centres provide women with an excellent opportunity to facilitate and develop communication among themselves.

Examples of successful experiences

In 1993, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation Through Agriculture, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development formulated a strategy for information exchange to ensure that women have access to S&T for development, together with ICTs as a major component of S&T. Its ultimate objective is to contribute to the empowerment and development of women. This strategy specifically addresses governments, NGOs, and other organizations whose programs aim to increase the contribution of women to rural economies and agricultural production.

The World Association for Christian Communication has developed another type of communication plan, providing information and information exchange in the following categories: satellite television and women in the media; publishing houses, radio stations, and broadcasts managed by women; and documentation and resource centres, establishment of networks, and new technologies for women working in the development sector. Several media and information services managed by women have already proven their feasibility. ISIS International, the Women’s Feature Service, and Women Ink are all international, but numerous other services operate locally.

ICTs are making the importance of networking for women more and more evident. NGONET was created before the Earth Summit to enable women, Southern groups, indigenous peoples, and community-based organizations to use innovative information-exchange processes. The network has proven itself an effective medium for encouraging participation in preparatory discussions, for supervising progress, and for stimulating action, even in forums from which NGOs had been excluded before. NGONET inspired the creation of the aid program for the women’s networks of the Association for Progressive Communications, which played a similar role in preparing for the World Conference on Women in Beijing (Stamp 1989).

The case of Burundi

An NGO in Burundi created a women’s centre with the following objectives:

• To support activities directed to peace and reconciliation;

• To develop and maintain dialogue among women;

• To develop group work;

• To maintain solidarity to improve the status of women; and

• To sensitize and educate people on family rights.

To achieve these objectives, the centre

• Organizes roundtables, reflection days, and discussions on themes proposed by women from various backgrounds;

• Trains women in matters of associated movements and on techniques for conflict resolution;

• Creates income-generating activities;

• Offers documents describing women’s activities in other associations;

• Visits other women’s associations on the ground;

• Facilitates contact with NGOs to obtain assistance when necessary;

• Trains trainers on family rights; and

• Works with female lawyers.

The case of Burkina Faso

The NGO Réseau de communication et d’information des femmes (RECIF, communication and information network for women) was established in response to the marginalization of women in Burkinabe society. Having started with only 5 members, RECIF has more than 50 today.

RECIF’s objectives are the following:

• To facilitate access to information;

• To ensure training to strengthen women’s capacities; and

• To offer women a forum to exchange ideas.

• Training more than 600 women in diverse economic and social activities and experience sharing;

• Publishing a newsletter that is translated into the country’s two principal languages;

• Offering a forum to enable women to valorize their knowledge; and

• Using ICTs (radio, video, and audiocassettes) to disseminate specific information;

The case of Uganda

In Uganda, former soldiers created an information centre to promote ideas on improving rural living conditions. The centre has enabled the wives of former combatants to become traders. People in Uganda are generally without television but have access to information on the radio. NGOs operating in Uganda provide newspapers and organize seminars on health, appropriate technologies, education, etc. According to one Ugandan, the Ugandan people would like to have a centre where the population could access information and share experiences. To this end, it would be important to identify the population’s needs. The government and politicians should be more involved if the Ugandan people are to achieve these objectives.

Conclusion and recommendations

ICTs facilitate exchange among women from diverse social groups; allow rapid access to information needed for exchanging, buying, producing, and selling products; and lead to increased productivity gains.

Through accessing, possessing, and using ICTs, women will play a bigger role in the redistribution of resources and wealth, and globalization is expected to bring about improved market operations and economic effectiveness within and between countries.

We have no choice but to recognize that the future of the planet, to a great extent, depends on women. Access to ICTs improves their living conditions through improvements in education, health, and employment and accords women important, urgently needed decision-making powers, rights, and freedoms. The African Women’s Centre should use the opportunity offered by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa to specifically improve the plight of African women. The Centre should develop a database on women and put all existing information on women on the Internet because there have been several successful experiences in rural areas all over the world. The centre might be linked to other networks around the world to avoid duplication, overlap, and other wastes of time and to build on the information already at the centre.

In areas without electricity, such as in Kenya and Nigeria, solar panels can be used to provide lighting and to pump water, thus giving women more time to pursue distance education and to improve their own living conditions.

Women’s ability to exercise their responsibilities, use their capacities, and realize their projects will depend on efforts to reduce poverty and exclusion and ultimately on efforts to create a coherent global society with solidarity among people throughout the world. To this end, I recommend that the various components of society, such as government, foreign partners, the private sector, and civil society

• Define quantifiable goals in the ICT sector within an institutional framework (ministries of communications, education, etc.) to create a certain division of labour in society at the largest consultative levels;

• Ensure technical assistance;

• Develop appropriate interfaces, technologies, and tools;

• Become an active part of the consultative process and contribute their active participation;

• Formulate educational and training programs to eliminate illiteracy among young girls and women;

• Establish equal access to ICTs for women and men;

• Formulate relevant educational and training services for women and young girls in the ICT sector;

• Sensitize women to all the means of communication at their disposal and to ways to use and adapt them to their needs;

• Promote the image of women as people who can successfully use ICTs;

• Encourage women’s entry into the ICT field;

• Sensitize women to the need to acquire competencies in the use of computers and information systems; and

• Facilitate and encourage the creation of telecentres with Internet access.

References

MOHSA (Ministry of Health and Social Action). 1996. Expanded Immunisation Programme. In Orientation Plan for Economic and Social Development. MOHSA, Dakar, Senegal.

Stamp, P. 1989. Technology, gender, and power in Africa. International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, ON, Canada.

World Bank. 1994. Exploiting information technology development: a case study of India. World Bank, Washington, DC, USA.

Document(s) 9 of 12