Document(s) 10 of 12

The winds of political change that blew across the African continent in the late 1980s and early 1990s brought, by and large, the demise of military dictatorships and one-party states. This new political climate offered renewed hope for the governance process, with the prospect of creating democratic cultures with dynamic civil societies and vibrant and pluralistic media. Given a well-informed citizenry capable of participating in governance, Africa’s odyssey into the democratic era would be complete.

However, the democratization process in Africa has only just begun, and in most cases African countries have yet to achieve the full emancipation of their citizens, although in others the reemergence of civil-society groups promises new forms of political, economic, and social governance. The strengthening of information and communication channels in all countries will become an urgent, if not critical, ingredient in this process. Evidently, information and communication technologies (ICTs) can support popular participation, particularly that of women, in governance.

Democratization and the emergence of civil societies in Africa

Increasingly, the democratic dispensation in Africa is imposing new demands on governments to foster a more pluralistic and open society and promote a greater role for various groups in public decision-making. Democratization affects political, economic, social, and cultural governance, embraces a diversity of views and opinions, and guarantees all citizens access to and participation in decision-making. Diversity, or “pluralism,” in civil society underpins sustainable, people-centred development and democracy. Unless people scrutinize the decisions that affect their lives, these decisions are unlikely to be sustainable. Freedom of expression is a vehicle of the democratization process, and it ensures political expression, economic participation, and social well-being. The principles of freedom of expression have become globalized. Faxes, e-mail, and communications satellites have made it impossible for political authorities to deny their citizens access to external information. However, women have not yet achieved the status of full and equal partners in key decision-making, particularly in politics and governance. If women are to become active participants in governance, they need to have access to credible, relevant, and understandable information. Citizens’ poor access to information and their lack of influence in decision-making processes can undermine the progress of many emerging African democracies.

Promotion of women’s participation in electoral and political processes

Eritrea, Uganda, and Tanzania have introduced gender quotas for parliaments, and major political parties in Botswana, South Africa, and Zambia have instituted minimum thresholds. Recent multiparty elections throughout the subcontinent have had mixed results. In Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Principe, the proportion of women in parliaments has fallen. By contrast, it has risen in Ethiopia, Mozambique, and South Africa.

African women seeking political office face many constraints, which are for the most part not unique to Africa. Among the common hurdles are the following:

• Political parties rarely support female candidates;

• Women have difficulty obtaining campaign funding;

• Few women have political-campaign skills;

• Women do not vote for women;

• Women are taught to avoid confrontation;

• Women in public are expected to follow, rather than lead; and

• Women and men are heirs to customs, traditions, and legal systems that discriminate against women.

In the Kenyan elections of December 1997, a woman stood for President. The number of women aspiring to Parliament in Kenya has more than tripled since 1992. These candidates were backed by an increasingly sophisticated network of women’s organizations determined to feminize Kenyan politics. The major symbol of women’s political advancement has been Charity Kaluki Ngilu, a 45-year-old business executive and mother of three, who gave President Moi a good run for his money. Phoebe Asiyo, a member of Kenya’s last Parliament, attributed the sharp rise in female political activity in Kenya to education and communications (Useem 1998). Despite these women’s efforts, few of them have been voted into Parliament. Although the number of women standing for election in Zambia increased from 14 in 1991 to 61 in 1996, their presence in Parliament only increased from 7 to 15.

Close-up of women and political empowerment in Africa

Women in Botswana, South Africa, Uganda, and very recently in Kenya have approached the issue of political participation with various strategies, but a common goal has been the empowerment of women at the political level (UNIFEM– AAI 1995). To varying degrees, many African women’s organizations are making a difference:

• Emang Basadi, Botswana — Emang Basadi, meaning “stand up women,” in Setswana, was formed as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in 1986. Botswana is a country of 1.2 million people, a multiparty and parliamentary democracy. Parliament has 40 elected and 4 appointed members and is complemented by the House of Chiefs. Although women make up slightly more than half the population, only two women sat in Parliament before October 1994. No woman has ever been in the House of Chiefs. Only 65 local government councillors out of 358 are women, and only 1 of the 17 cabinet ministers is a woman.


Although women carry out a large portion of the grass-roots political activity, they have been effectively excluded from positions of power and influence. Because of this, Emang Basadi published the “Women’s Manifesto,” a 20-page document in English and Setswana that cites the underrepresentation of women in all sectors of the economy (UNIFEM–AAI 1995). Under “Women and Democracy,” the manifesto demands that the government and all political parties “ensure equal participation and representation by women in all national and local legislative and decision-making bodies so that they have a say in the making of laws, policies and programmes that affect their lives.”

Emang Basadi’s political-education project brought women’s issues into the political manifestos of the country’s two largest parties for the first time since Botswana’s independence in 1966. Furthermore, the Botswana government met Emang Basadi halfway in its demand that the government appoint women to four special parliamentary positions, and the proportion of women in Parliament grew from 5% to 11% after the 1994 election. This was an improvement, although it fell short of the 25% goal.

• Uganda Women’s Caucus — Unlike Botswana, Uganda suffered two decades of political strife and turmoil after achieving its independence. In 1994, the Constituent Assembly began work on a new Constitution for the country. A minimum of 15% of those elected to Parliament and the Constituent Assembly and one in nine local-government council members were to be women, according to an affirmative-action measure of the Nghonel Resistance Movement government. To increase women’s political clout and broaden the base of support for women’s issues, women in the Constituent Assembly embarked on a series of strategic alliances with youth, workers, and disabled delegates. To increase the skills of its members, the Women’s Caucus embarked on a series of training exercises through advocacy workshops, and it organized training workshops on managing campaigns, constituency- and coalition-building, and parliamentary procedures.


The most innovative tool of the Women’s Caucus has been the Gender Dialogues, in which both men and women are invited to debate and hold discussions on common issues. These initiatives have ensured that the new Ugandan Constitution would be gender neutral and would prohibit any laws, customs, or traditions undermining the dignity or well-being of women.

• Women’s National Coalition, South Africa (Taylor 1997) — In the 1990s, women from various organizations came together to form the Women’s National Coalition in South Africa to mobilize women to develop and promote a charter of women’s rights. The South African Parliament has now accepted this “Charter on Effective Equality of Women in South Africa.” In addition, women insisted on being active participants in the multiparty Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), the first formal negotiations forum for the National Party government, the African National Congress, and other parties, which began its work at the end of 1991. CODESA negotiated the political transition from apartheid under National Party rule to multiparty elections, as well as an interim Constitution during 1991–94. As a result of women’s participation in this forum, they now constitute one-third of all representatives in Parliament. In addition, the new South African Constitution entrenches gender equality and makes provision for a Commission on Gender Equality.

Women’s vision for their societies often differs from men’s because they understand clearly the impact of distorted priorities on their families and communities. The vision of women is one of inclusion not exclusion, peace not conflict, integrity not corruption, and consensus not imposition.

Johnson-Sirleaf (1997, p. 25)

Ultimately, democratization relies on effective and dynamic public debate, with a critical mass of expertise and knowledge to interpret and provide indigenous analyses of issues. Many African countries lack the institutions and expertise to subject communication policies to informed and constructive scrutiny. Countries must strengthen such capacities if they are to adjust to the economics of the new communication environment. In South Africa, widespread competition in the Internet market has led to low prices and a rapid diffusion of services. In Ethiopia, those favouring privatization as a means to generate greater accessibility to information say that government monopoly of Internet services is incompatible with moves to spread Internet use.

Promotion of women’s use of communication resources in society

Currently, communication resources in Africa do not take women’s needs into account, nor have the current policies of deregulation and liberalization of communications addressed issues of communication for empowering women. Furthermore, in many African countries, the mass media are the voice of the powerful. Government-owned media are the mouthpieces of the ruling party, offering the majority of people little opportunity to articulate their views and opinions. Consequently, the women’s movement in general has long been critical of the mass media, charging that they are deeply implicated in reinforcing patterns of discrimination against women in society. An analysis of gender roles and stereotypes in the media indicates that few reports deal with issues of special concern to women or reflect a gender perspective.

With the advent of ICTs, women need to discuss the use of gender-sensitive information to decide whether to create their own closed spaces on the Internet or to assert their presence in mixed spaces. Without this kind of action, we can expect that the new medium will be yet another means to perpetuate negative stereotypes, another male enclave discriminating against women and marginalizing them. What is important is that people can participate in creating the messages transmitted through the new ICTs. Because communications is at the heart of empowering people, women must ensure that the new technologies facilitate their empowerment. Increasingly, computer literacy is becoming an indispensable tool for organizing and mobilizing communities throughout the world, and women need to be directly involved in the use of this new medium.

Experience shows that women have created and used alternative communication channels to support their efforts, defend their rights, diffuse their own forms of representation, and question dominant models of mainstream culture. One outstanding example is the Radio Listening Clubs in Zimbabwe. This project started in 1988, with funds from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Some of the partners are the Federation of Africa Media Women Zimbabwe (FAMWZ), the Association of Women’s Clubs, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). There are 52 Radio Listening Clubs in Zimbabwe. Members, mostly women, assemble at a local centre and listen to a half-hour radio program, recording it with a portable cassette recorder. Thereafter, the members debate the recorded broadcast. They raise other issues of concern and record them in the same manner, setting their own news agenda. Back at the studios of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, the coordinator identifies the officials or others who should respond to these recordings and compiles a program to broadcast the responses. Through the Radio Listening Clubs, rural Zimbabwean women have been able to articulate their views and opinions on legislative processes affecting their well-being.

The importance of the Radio Listening Clubs was noted by Jennifer Sibanda (1997¹):

Currently, the notion of ICTs as tools for democratization presents more challenges than benefits. For the rural African women with no electricity or piped water a computer is unrealistic. So the challenge would be, how do we fit such people into the information superhighway? The answer lies in reinforcing projects such as the Radio Listening Clubs where rural, ordinary women have created their own voice. We need to integrate radio and the Internet to create space for such women. But then again, rural Zimbabwean women speak only Shona and/or Ndebele not English. Language, therefore limits the participation of such women in the information revolution.

In other dimensions, women are finding ways to use ICTs for their advocacy efforts. For example, groups in Mexico have found that electronic networking has facilitated their work in fighting the North American Free Trade Agreement. Other groups help women gain access and training. For example, the Women’s Online Network is an online advocacy and action group sponsored by women’s organizations. In Africa, groups such as Abantu for Development, SANGONeT, Environment, Development, Action (ENDA), and the African Women’s Network of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) have been conducting training for women’s groups.

New technologies have characteristics similar to those of the alternative media, and they are suited to the needs of women’s networks because they are decentralized and horizontal. The essential difference between these and the mainstream media is their relation to space. The challenge is to maintain the Internet as an open communication system with democratic access to information, as opposed to maintaining a centrally controlled medium. For women’s organizations, this may mean establishing and defining their own spaces or influencing the character of online culture in favour of gender balance and nondiscrimination.
 
 

Women and ICTs

Women in continental Africa are far more likely to walk on dirt track than to surf along the electronic information superhighway. Despite the hype and hyperbole regarding global information development, there still exist significant geographic disparities in the rate of development of these electronic and communication networks. African’s supply of the three basic constituents required for the introduction and development of these technologically intensive projects — telecommunication networks and computer systems; knowledge and skills for design, utilization, modification and adaptation of these systems; and integration of science and technology developmental objectives in national planning policies and programmes — is still woefully inadequate.

Marcelle (1997)

Through the Internet and e-mail resources, such as discussion groups and newsgroups, FOWODE can link up with other organizations in the region, discuss critical regional issues, and inform MPs about regional dynamics and politics. For instance, when war broke out between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1998, President Museveni visited Addis Ababa to consult with President Meles Zenawi. Through a listserv, FOWODE members could follow discussions between the leaders of the region and even issue a statement before President Museveni arrived home.

FOWODE staff print out discussions of interest to MPs, solicit their responses, and feed these into the listserv. Also, staff members respond to an MP’s request for specific information, which can involve research on the Internet on a particular issue. MPs now have training programs to help them use computers, conduct their own searches, and participate in listservs.

A need for this was expressed in the remarks of Elizabeth Chipampata, MP for Kalulushi, Copperbelt Province, Zambia, speaking at the Panos Internet & Telecommunications Workshop for MPs, 5–6 January 1998:

The use of the Internet as a source of information for women within the democratization process is a positive idea. As a female Member of Parliament, it would assist me to research and access information on various issues concerning women and obtain information from other parliaments around the world. If I owned such a facility it would greatly enhance my work. The knowledge and skill I acquired on the use of the Internet has been helpful in informing me about what is happening in other countries and enlightened me about various issues. I am grateful for this experience.

In a recent survey, the Women’s Networking Support Programme (WNSP), a project of the APC Women’s Programme, quoted Dale Spender (Nattering on the Net), who maintains that women’s marginalization from the new technologies has “less to do with women and more to do with computers,” as computers are the domain of wealth, power, and influence. Spender warned that “women cannot afford to permit white male dominance of these technologies because a very distorted view of the world is created when only one social group, with one set of experiences pronounces on how it will be for all” (APC 1997). Relevant and useful resources on women will never appear unless women work to create them (often under difficult conditions). Moreover, as women’s knowledge is presently encoded in books, it may be endangered by a shift from print to electronic media.

The new ICTs have considerable potential to aid in the advancement of women. Reasonably affordable computer communication media, such as e-mail, the Internet, hypertext, and hypermedia, make it infinitely easier to network, do research, train, and share ideas and information. In Africa, women’s participation, both at the personal level and at the national level, can lead to positive results. The Community of Living Water, an organization based in the Western Cape of South Africa, works with a group of women called Masizakhe (meaning “building together”) in the area of Kayamandi. The purpose of the project is to support women’s organic gardening. It has used ICTs in two ways: to deliver information on organic-gardening techniques and resources and to teach English-language skills via CD-ROM. The group has used two websites in particular — one maintained by Ohio University; and Time–Life’s electronic encyclopedia of gardening. Women initially develop reading skills with CD-ROMs and then supplement these skills with adult-educational information on the Internet. This has sparked a community initiative to donate used clothing to finance the women’s enrollment in additional adult-education courses on SANGONeT, the local network.

However, the obstacles are still formidable. Unequal access to computers at school and at home and highly male-dominated computer languages and operating systems are just some of the factors deterring women from entering into cyberspace. In Africa, high illiteracy rates, language and time constraints, and cultural and traditional inhibitions make women’s access to computers all the more difficult.

The notion of women using ICTs to network on a national, regional, and continental basis provides solidarity and breaks the sense of isolation in Africa where women are marginalized and geographically dispersed and lack access to the processes of governance. Electronic solidarity campaigns have been mounted in Africa to advance the rights of women, and e-mail has proven an effective tool for mobilizing solidarity and influencing public opinion. Female MPs have used e-mail to gain solidarity with other female MPs in South Africa and in countries in West Africa, for instance.
 
 

ICTs and women’s rights

We have to acknowledge that women’s low status and the discrimination against them which limits the scope of their rights in most of our countries is not an accident. The causes of women’s subordination and unequal gender relations are deeply rooted in history, religion, culture, in laws and legal systems, and in political institutions and social attitudes. The solutions therefore, require a comprehensive approach to address long-term systemic discrimination and oppression.

Amoako (1997²)

People have the right to acquire the skills necessary to participate fully in public communication. This requires basic literacy in reading and writing, training in story-telling, as well as media literacy, computer literacy and critical education about the role of communication in society.

People have a right to universal access to and equitable use of cyberspace. With the increasing importance of cyberspace for many social activities, people’s rights to free and open communities in cyberspace, their freedom of electronic expression, and the protection of their privacy against electronic surveillance and intrusion should be secured.

For this reason, the International Development Research Centre developed the Acacia Initiative to widen access to ICTs in Africa. Telecentres provide public access to telephone, fax, e-mail, and the Internet. Telecentres with 8–10 telephone lines each are transforming people’s communication opportunities in Uganda’s five districts. Elizabeth Amuto, a community development officer in Nabweru, one of five districts with a functioning telecentre, reported that it was a welcome relief or people, especially women:

Currently, people have to go to Kampala for information, it costs money to travel and then they may find the person is not there or they don’t have the information. The “telecentre” will save us time and money.

Opoku-Mensah (1998b)

We have plenty of women’s projects in this area but many remote villages can’t get information on when there is an exhibition where they can bring their handicrafts.

Opoku-Mensah (1998b)

With funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program of Georgetown University (Washington, DC) has, since 1993, sponsored and administered the Leadership and Advocacy for Women in Africa (LAWA) project. The LAWA project recruits, selects, and trains female lawyers from Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda who are interested in advancing the cause of women’s rights upon returning to their country. Selected participants come to Washington for 16 months of advanced legal study and work assignments on legal and policy issues affecting the status of women.

All of the LAWA fellows receive Internet and e-mail training, and USAID has made funds available to enable the women to purchase computers and start up e-mail accounts upon returning home. Of the 15 fellows who have returned home, only 3 women based in Uganda have succeeded in activating accounts, which can be difficult. One of the alumnae, Gloria Ofori-Boadu of Accra, Ghana, did her graduate work on legal obstacles to women’s empowerment in Ghana. She and her colleagues have been attempting to set up a microcredit initiative, modeled on the Grameen Bank, to work with Ghanaian female small-traders. Gloria has not had direct access to e-mail because she has not yet been able to afford or obtain a separate phone line. To use e-mail, she drives 20 km to the university library, presents a copy of the information to be sent, either in manuscript or diskette form, and pays 1 United States dollar (USD) per page to send a message. She pays 50 cents per page to receive a message. She has to wait 2 days to pick up replies, but in any event most e-mails sent from the university library never arrive at their destinations because the library personnel key in the wrong addresses.

In the second half of 1996, LAWA placed Regina Rweyemamu, a magistrate from northern Tanzania, with the US Federal Judicial Training Center and the International Women Judges Foundation (IWJF). Regina has worked to develop a judicial training program for Tanzanian judges, and IWJF wants to work with her to further develop and present her program. But it will be impossible to run a program with Regina if she cannot get online.

Ultimately, LAWA expects all of its alumnae to succeed in activating accounts, because it is too important not to. They need to be able to share information about litigation and legislative strategies to combat domestic violence; change sexually discriminatory inheritance, contract, and family laws and practices; and learn about new developments in AIDS prevention (a subject several of them are working on). Funding is expected to be an ongoing problem. Although the costs of access are falling, they are still likely to be higher than these women can easily afford for the foreseeable future.

Creating content and disseminating information on women’s rights

Women are taking new steps and increasingly moving in new directions by networking electronically. … these days it is not unusual to see women’s networks and organizations making the most of new information and communication tools to get their message out and make their voices heard.

IWTC (1996)

In the survey conducted by the WNSP, a Kenyan woman wrote specifically about her experience with an APC training session in South Africa:

My experience with e-mail was very basic. The workshop enabled me to articulate a proposal for increasing connectivity among adult educators on the continent and amongst members. It gave me enough knowledge of e-mail to be able to train other people in basic elements of e-mail. As a result, we held a workshop and connected a number of organizations.

APC (1997)

According to Marie-Hélène Mottin-Sylla of ENDA–Dakar’s Synergie, Genre et Développement (SYNFEV, Synergy, Gender and Development),

The freedom to have access to spaces other than the bedroom and the kitchen, and to fully and safely be able to act in other public spaces is key to women’s participation in the world’s future. Unless African women can participate fully in cyberspace, they will face a new form of exclusion from society.

Pruett and Deane (1998, p. 2)

A critical aim of Women’sNet, set up in 1998, is to enhance the ability of law- and policymakers and civil society to influence various political and decision-making processes that seek to redress the unequal status of women in South African society. Thus, the initial target groups for this network were

• Gender specialists in legislatures, local and provincial governments, and government line departments;

• People working on women’s and gender issues in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs);

• Membership-based women’s organizations;

• Women’s studies departments and gender units in educational institutions; and

• People working on women’s issues at the community level.

Information on how and where to make a submission to a parliamentary committee, for example, would accompany a government gazette announcement inviting public submissions on a particular bill. Updated information, such as an online calendar of events, would have a format that allowed it to be effectively reproduced as a printed document. Information might also be edited and presented in a format for community radio stations, the most accessible medium of communication in South Africa.

To minimize the gap between those who already have access to technology and to basic computer-skills training and those who have historically been denied such access, a critical component of Women’sNet is to empower women through skills training. As Anriette Esterhuysen (1997⁴) remarked,

Women in Africa are marginalised, geographically dispersed and lacking in access to the processes of governance. To achieve political emancipation women need to acquire the skills that enable them [to] access, publish and propagate issues, opinions and experiences from their own perspectives. Emancipation is a political process that requires organizing, strategizing, accessing information, lobbying and advocacy. ICTs offer networking, creating peer support, campaigning and sharing of information — spaces that women can control and use to further their interests.

• A training workshop for an information-management team;

• A national workshop to launch the Women’sNet and provide electronic networking and skills development;

• Provincial workshops on networking and skills development;

• Workshops to train trainers; and

• Maintenance and occasional skills training on request.

Africa-wide database at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

The African Centre for Women (ACW) is a division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). Established in 1975, ACW is the regional women-in-development structure in the United Nations system in Africa. ACW services national, regional, and subregional structures that are involved in the advancement of women. ECA’s strategy places a new and greater emphasis on gender issues as crosscutting concerns in the priority areas of focus, which are the following:

• Economic and social policy analysis;

• Development management;

• Food security and sustainable development;

• Information for development; and

• Regional cooperation and integration.

Sharing experiences

NGOs — linked through functionally relevant networks — have the potential to play a crucial two-way role of strengthening the work and organizational skills which grassroots communities require for their food self-sufficiency, and articulating grassroots concerns at the policy level. NGOs, therefore, potentially have a developmental function both in directly enhancing the food security context of the poorest populations as well as placing their food security concerns and needs on the national development agenda.

Ephraim Matinhira,⁵ quoted in Richardson (1996)

Internationally, APC is among the most actively involved in supporting women through electronic communication. Women in Latin America, as well as Canada and the United States, have been using the APC networks for information exchange, and the WNSP has provided training workshops for women in Africa and Asia.

Karen Banks of GreenNet made the point that women’s ICT activities take on a dynamic of their own:

They help women to develop confidence and experience in expressing their viewpoints publicly by allowing space for experimentation and enabling them to find allies across communities, nations and regions.

IDRC (1999)

Training partnerships in Africa

Training women in Africa will require a collaborative approach from donors and international, regional, and national organizations. A few collaborative training initiatives are described below.

Setting up networks in francophone Africa: SYNFEV, ENDA’s program on communication for women

After the Beijing World Conference on Women, SYNFEV proposed a workshop to facilitate the development of electronic communications for women’s groups in francophone Africa. With the assistance of APC, SYNFEV was able to identify a donor, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), to financially support this project. Participants each left the workshop with a modem, installation and configuration disks, and addresses for local Internet or network access. An electronic network on the theme was put in place to further the process of communication. SYNFEV also set up an electronic conference on rights and health for francophone African women, “femmes.afrique” (the primary theme of SYNFEV’s organizations). Currently, SYNFEV is working to increase its capacities to search the World Wide Web for other sites with information relevant to femmes.afrique, to diversify its sources of information.

WACC has also agreed to financially support a project to provide technical on-site assistance for electronic communications for women in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Togo. In each country the technician does the following:

• Checks the technical situation of the organization’s electronic connection and reviews and completes the user’s training;

• Organizes a session on sensitizing the country’s women’s organizations;

• Installs two modems and trains users from two women’s organizations; and

• Participates in visits to sensitize local organizations involved in the provision of Internet access (administrative services, Internet service providers [ISPs], support agencies for women’s development), with the goal of facilitating future establishment of national-level projects for training and equipping other women’s groups.

Members of the group are still not posting information, which reduces the network’s level of interactivity. This is still a new tool for most women, and they are not used to sharing information in this way. However, Mottin-Sylla (personal communication, 1998⁶) said she received

lots of Christmas messages from women all over the sub-region. This shows that there is room for a culture of electronic networking on issues once they start to share information. It’s just a matter of time.

The Reproductive Rights Alliance is a network of organizations and structures “committed to creating and promoting a liberalised, safe and legal framework for reproductive health and well-being” (IDRC 1999). It was formed in early 1996 to organize support for reproductive rights and comprehensive reproductive heath-care services in South Africa and, more specifically, to work to have legislation passed to allow safe abortions. It brings together some 27 organizations with a history of activism on the issues of reproductive freedom, rights, and health.

As a networking body, the Alliance has planned to strengthen the work of individual organizations in the field by disseminating information and lobbying for the pro-choice position. The Alliance raised funds to help its members and management committee get online — where necessary, purchasing modems, supplying software, and taking out subscriptions to ISPs to enable its members to make effective use of an e-mail communication system.

In February 1996, the Alliance set up a listserv through SANGONeT. Some of the women who joined the listserv were new to computing and even newer to e-mail, having received modems from the Alliance. Some of the participants commented that they did not include electronic communications in their daily routine. People with busy programs were used to spending time on the telephone, faxing, or attending meetings but were unaccustomed to taking time to check their e-mail and participate in the listserv. However, those with many years of experience using e-mail participated in the listserv more freely and actively.

Some of the criticisms of the listserv were that too few people participated actively (about 20–25% used it consistently to discuss substantive issues) and that it was a one-way communication stream from the Alliance to its members. The major problem was in sending documents. People were unable to decode them. The Alliance used WordPerfect 6.1, which may have added to the difficulties encountered in reading the files in MSWord.⁷ The Alliance therefore had to send documents by fax or resend them in ASCII, as well as by e-mail. This was identified as a training issue but was never effectively addressed.

A further plan of the Alliance is to reach rural organizations dealing with reproductive rights. It would use e-mail to do this, as far as possible. However, most of the contacts are through government organizations or NGOs, which tend to lack infrastructure. Although money alone is not the issue, the lack of infrastructure, such as computers, and the knowledge to use them may present problems for the Alliance.

North–South partnerships

Supporting women’s electronic networking in Africa: WNSP

The WNSP works with a community defined as groups of female networkers who are leaders in their own right in the fields of journalism, health, and reproductive rights, ISPs, information brokerage, and environmental sustainability. They work as intermediaries, providing linkages for their communities in and through national and international initiatives and forums. They are motivators, animators, and focal points of networks in their countries and regions, and they use ICTs to facilitate their work with their communities.

The WNSP’s objectives are to equip women’s groups in Africa, Asia, and Latin America with the necessary access to training, technology, and information to

• Facilitate local, regional, and international communication and information exchange;

• Empower women with an information tool they can use to increase their own visibility and highlight their own achievements as primary agents of development;

• Provide access to communication channels and facilitate information exchange for women and men around the Beijing process;

• Respond to women’s training needs and support the involvement of a core group of female technicians and information-management specialists (IDRC 1999).

ICTs and governments: strengthening women’s political and public participation

Making government information available to citizens is important, if not critical, to governance. By giving society access to such information, a government invites wider participation. Tools such as the World Wide Web and e-mail can be useful in furthering both central- and local-government communication, which can create a culture of open governance.

For instance, in the United States, the League of Women Voters, the Public Information Exchange, and the Project Vote Smart began the Voter Online Information and Communication Exchange to provide information on local, state, and national candidates via a web page. Public libraries had project terminals, and the web page was available to anyone with a computer and modem. Citizens could find candidate profiles for local, state, and national campaigns, in addition to information on polling places, voting, candidate voting records, campaign contributions, and third-party ratings of candidates.

With the introduction of telecentres in some African countries, there is no reason why women’s groups cannot create online sites to enhance women’s access to voter information. Such telecentres would respond to some of the difficulties in the electoral process cited by Prisca Nyambe (personal communication, 1998⁸):

During the 1991 Zambian elections, one of the difficulties in the electoral process was communicating vital information to voters, especially women in rural areas who knew nothing about civic education, voters rights, etc. If at the time computers were strategically placed throughout the country people could have obtained relevant information for their political emancipation. It is not only critical that voters have access to information during elections, but there must also be consistent information flows from voters to politicians and vice versa — otherwise the process becomes meaningless. The use of ICTs can address this.

The South African government is planning to integrate information technology into much of what it does. At the Africa Telecom ’98 conference, it launched a new scheme to provide 24-hour access to government departments through public information terminals (PITs). Research conducted by the Department of Communications had shown that just as people like to do their shopping after working hours and during the weekend, they also want to deal with government departments most during those hours. Under this scheme, the public uses a PIT for such time-consuming tasks as applying for a driver’s licence, a passport, or even a government tender — at the public’s convenience.

According to Andile Ngcaba, Director-General of South Africa’s Department of Communications, who conceived of the project, “PITs can ease backlogs in medical care, as well as provide other valuable government information usually not found, and offer citizens access to the Internet, e-mail and teleshopping.” So far, five prototype terminals have appeared in post offices, supermarkets, and other public places, at a cost of 40000 USD per unit. “The next generation of PITs,” Ngcaba said, “will have small cameras integrated into the technology with digital signatures for people to fill and sign most government forms straight from the machine” (Opoku-Mensah 1998a).

ICTs and local government

African countries are making efforts to decentralize their governments and to strengthen local-government administrations. Strategic ICT interventions might be of help in this endeavour. Women’s groups could work with local governments to expedite women’s access to government services and information, promote their participation in political debate and government decision-making, and enhance government accountability. If ICTs are to be used for these purposes, stakeholders need to develop goals, identify constraints, as outlined in Tables 1 and 2, and proceed to the issues of how to present and access information.
 
 

Table 1. Policy goals for governments.
Policy goal	ICT implementation	Measure of success
Promote women’s participation in political debate and government decision-making	Provide information on town meetings, agenda, and minutes on issues of concern to women’s groups	Women’s increased participation, electronic or otherwise, in local government affairs
Enhance government accountability	Provide electronic access to government officials via e-mail	Results of a survey of women to measure quality of responses to complaints and comments

 
 

Table 2. Constraints for NGOs.
Constraint	Potential resolution
Lack of women’s access to ICTs	Provide Internet connections at focal points: telecentres, public libraries, hospitals, community centres, and Internet kiosks owned and operated by women
High costs of owning computer equipment and high fees for Internet access	Provide free access for disadvantaged citizens, subsidize access for associations and NGOs, provide discounts to SMEs owned by women
Computer illiteracy among users	Provide free or low-cost computer training and more user-friendly software
Limited knowledge and use of the English language	Enlist NGOs to act as intermediaries, providing translations and disseminating information
Note: NGO, nongovernmental organization; SMEs, small- and medium-scale enterprises.

Conclusions and recommendations

In summary, a mixture of political, technological, and economic changes has enabled a new model of communications to emerge. It is decentralized, pluralistic, and democratic, empowering rather than controlling, and it fosters debate among citizens, communities, people, and government. This model envisages increasingly horizontal communications, allowing people to communicate with each other easily and inexpensively, and involves the steady disintegration of the top-down approach, in which governments own and control the flows of information.

Communications will have radically new effects on the social well-being of African countries over the next few years. Global economic liberalization of telecommunications, the rapid deployment of the Internet in most developing countries, mobile telephony and other new technologies, along with a changing political environment, have all coincided to make the last years of the 20th century a definitive moment for countries attempting to adapt to these developments and exploit them. If such changes are to accommodate politically and economically marginalized people and improve their lives, then both governments and people will have to make deliberate decisions that reflect the diversity of views within their societies.

Recommendations

Based on the examples and models put forward above, I make the following recommendations.

Policy dialogue with governments

Two main sets of actors greatly determine the information-technology landscape in Africa: national governments and specialized agencies in the United Nations system, primarily the International Telecommunication Union and UNESCO. The feminist movement needs to exert its influence on how the state diffuses best or accepted practices. New networks, such as Women’sNet and the Reproductive Rights Alliance in South Africa, should engage the government in communication-policy dialogue in the legislative and decision-making processes.

African governments need to involve women and women’s organizations in devising strategies to develop the Internet and telecommunications. To arrive at more rational and humane policies, governments must involve women’s organizations more closely in consultations and decision-making sessions.

Partnerships with local governments

If ICTs are to have a greater impact on the democratization process, then local governments must come into the loop (see the earlier section “ICTs and Governments: Strengthening Women’s Political and Public Participation”). CBOs must in particular try to forge alliances with local-government authorities to introduce the use of ICTs in communities.

Women’s groups as information facilitators

Connecting individual rural women directly to the Internet is impractical in Africa. However, women’s groups can use Internet systems and ICTs to provide better services to a range of groups, from small-scale farmers, to petty traders, to housewives. Women’s groups are in a unique position to act as information facilitators and to serve as bridges for people without access to ICTs. For example, the Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre, FOWODE (in Uganda), and the South African Women’sNet offer information to people without access to computers or to ICTs in general.

Exploring appropriate technology

Africa can find ways to adapt to ICTs without thinking in terms of high-tech equipment. For instance, the use of alternatives to full Internet connectivity, such as protocols like FIDO, is still quite popular in Africa. Offline facilities or low-tech tools, such as radio, fax, or personal communications, that are combined with computer facilities can be particularly useful for rural African women’s organizations. Uganda’s Bushnet is an ISP using high-frequency radio communications to provide links between its servers and its subscribers. A centrally managed polling station has a computer, a high-frequency radio, and a modem and is linked to the Internet through another Ugandan ISP. Through high-frequency radio stations owned by its customers in remote areas, Bushnet brings Internet services to parts of the country that no other ISP can reach. But this service doesn’t come cheap! The full high-frequency radio station costs 6600–7500 USD, and the connection fee, which includes training and online support, is more than 1000 USD. To send messages four times a day would cost 100 USD. This is considerably more expensive than Uganda’s conventional ISPs, which charge 50.00–65.00 USD a month. However, countries would find it a challenge to decide how to bring down the price, given the limited infrastructure in rural areas.

Monitoring and evaluating the impact of ICTs on women

Efforts should be made to monitor and evaluate women’s use of ICTs for sustainable development and democracy. These efforts should focus on the following:

• Assessing women’s needs:

• Identifying needs and opportunities for increasing women’s access,
• Identifying needs and opportunities for increasing women’s control of ICT resources and benefits,
• Relating women’s needs and opportunities to the country’s general and sectoral development goals, and
• Determining how women have been consulted;

• Monitoring the impact of ICTs on women’s activities:

• Assessing how ICTs have affected women’s activities, and
• Assessing the positive and negative impacts of ICTs on women; and

• Measuring the impact of women’s access and control of ICTs:

• Assessing how women can acquire roles in the generation and dissemination of information, and
• Assessing women’s access to and control of ICT resources and how the benefits can be increased.

African economies and democracies are in transition, and the interface between their economies and their democracies will be the greatest challenge facing this continent. ICTs will be crucial to managing this interface. ICTs also offer African countries an opportunity to leapfrog into a technological era that can transform the continent.

References

APC (Association for Progressive Communications). 1997. Global networking for change: experiences from the APC Women’s Programme survey. APC Women’s Programme, London, UK.

IDRC (International Development Research Centre). 1999. The Acacia Initiative. IDRC, Ottawa, ON, Canada. Internet: web.idrc.ca/acacia

IWTC (International Women’s Tribune Centre). 1996. The Tribune, 55.

Johnson-Sirleaf, E. 1997. Empowering women for the 21st century: development and leadership. In Aderinwale, A., ed., The challenges of politics, business, development and leadership. ALF Publications, London, UK.

Marcelle, G. 1995. Using information technology to strengthen African women’s organisations. Abantu for Development, London, UK.

NCR (Namibia Country Report). 1997. Reports submitted by states parties under Article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women: initial report of states parties: Namibia. United Nations Development Programme, New York, NY, USA. CEDAW/C/NAM/1, 10 Feb.

Opoku-Mensah, A. 1998a. Need a passport? Panos Features, 30 Jun.

——— 1998b. Telecentres excite Ugandans — but what about the poor? Panos Features, 4 Aug.

Pruett, D.; Deane, J. 1998. The Internet and poverty: real help or real hype? Panos, London, UK. Panos Briefing No. 28. Internet: www.oneworld.org/panos/briefing/interpov.htm

Richardson, D. 1996. The Internet and rural development: recommendations for strategy and activity. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy.

Taylor, V. 1997. Social mobilization: lessons from the mass democratic movement. Mega Print, Cape Town, South Africa.

UNIFEM–AAI (United Nations Development Fund for Women; African–American Institute). 1995. African women in politics: together for change — three struggles for political rights (Botswana, Uganda and Zambia). UNIFEM, New York, NY, USA.

Useem, A. 1998. Greeting Madame President. Africa Today, Jan.

¹ Interview with J. Sibanda, Director of the Federation of African Media Women in SADC (Southern African Development Community), Harare, Zimbabwe, 16 Dec 1997. Return

² Dr K.Y. Amoako, Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, opening comments at the Conference on Gender and Law, 29 Oct 1997. Return

³ The People’s Communication Charter was developed by the Centre for Communication and Human Rights (Netherlands), the Third World Network (Malaysia), the Cultural Environment Movement (United States), and the World Association of Community Broadcasters-World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (Peru and Canada). Return

⁴ A. Esterhuysen, Executive Director of SANGONeT, Johannesburg, South Africa, telephone interview, Dec 1997. Return

⁵ Regional Administrator, Food Security Network of SADC (Southern African Development Community) NGOs. Return

⁶ Marie-Hé lène Mottin-Sylla, SYNFEV, ENDA-Dakar, Senegal, personal communication, 1998. Return

⁷ Mention of a proprietary name does not constitute an endorsement of the product but is given only for information. Return

⁸ P. Nyambe, human-rights lawyer with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, personal communication, 1998. Return

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