Africa’s leading technology innovators would
gather in the city of Accra, Ghana for the second Africa Summit on Women and
Girls in Technology, with top on the agenda being how to reduce the
continent’s growing digital gender gap among women, reports ITREALMS.
The Summit, billed for October 9-11 , ITREALMS reports, comes at a crucial time
when the world is set to reach 50 per cent connectivity as its aimed at designing
solutions that will enable millions of African women and girls to benefit from
access to technology and use their skills to build a better Africa for all.
The three-day event, ITREALMS
report, would feature lightning talks from young African female technologists,
as well as high-level discussions with many of Africa’s most prominent ICT
policymakers and technology leaders today, including: Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful,
Minister of Communications, Ghana; Dr Omobola Johnson, former Nigerian Minister
of Communication Technology; Bitilokho Ndiaye, Gender Technical Advisor at
Ministry of Communication, Telecommunications, Posts and Digital Economy,
Senegal; and many others.
Bridging the digital gender gap
is a critical step toward the vision of a thriving Africa — yet research has
shown that women in some communities are up to 50 per cent less likely than men to be online.
In
Africa, where nearly 75 per cent of the population remains offline, this
problem is particularly acute. The Summit will explore a range of relevant
topic areas, with a focus on developing policy to advance “Access to affordable
broadband, Women's rights online, Digital education and skills, and Digital
entrepreneurship,” said the organisers, in a press statement available to ITREALMS.
The 2018 Africa Summit on Women and Girls in Technology is a
collaboration between the World
Wide Web Foundation, Alliance
for Affordable Internet (A4AI), Ghana Ministry of Communications, African Development Bank, Open Society Initiative for West
Africa, Internet
Society, Facebook, Federal Ministry of Economic
Cooperation and Development (Germany), Google, Swedish International Development Agency and UN Women.
Nkem Nweke/GEE
No comments:
Post a Comment