Nigeria has emerged a winner of the GEM-TECH Awards 2014 for initiating policies and programs empowering women and girls via ICTs.
The Award by the International Telecommunications Union ITU and UN Women in the 7th category of ‘Nigeria was amongst the 360 nominations received from over 74 countries across the globe featured in the maiden edition of the joint ITU and UN Women award.
The purpose of the GEMTECH Award initiative is to recognize and honour outstanding performers and role models in gender equality and mainstreaming in the area of ICTs.
The Federal Ministry of Communication Technology was amongst 37 finalists selected from 360 nominations from 74 countries and went on to win the award in the 7th of “ICT and Broadband strategies, policies and frameworks that promote women’s digital empowerment.”
Announcing Nigeria as a winner in the 7th category at the ongoing 2014 ITU Plenipotentiary in Busan, South Korea on the 28th HamadounToure commended Nigeria and the Minister of Communication Technology for initiating positive policies and programmes that are changing the lives of women and girls in Nigeria through information and communication technologies.
In her remarks after receiving the Award on behalf of Nigeria, Dr Omobola Johnson, Minister of Communication Technology, described the Award as an important recognition and validation of the efforts of President Goodluck Jonatahn’s administration on gender inclusion and empowerment facilitated by information and communication technologies.
She said that with the under representation of women and girls in ICTs, especially in emerging economies like Nigeria and the growing importance of ICTs for national socio economic development closing the digital divide has now become a development priority for Nigeria.
Noting the contribution of ICTs to socio economic development and various statistics that illustrate the under representation of women and girls in ICTs across the world but most especially in developing economies, Dr Johnson emphasised that closing the digital divide has become a development priority for Nigeria in order to promote inclusive development.
‘’We are committed to getting more women and girls into ICTs . We want to ensure that Nigerian women and girls are encouraged and empowered to embrace ICTs. It is critical to category October , the Secretary General of the ITU, Dr get our girls to adopt ICTs so that they are not left behind in the digital revolution changing communities and nations across the globe’’
Various global reports and statistics reveal that women and girls are grossly underrepresented in the field of ICTs.. According to the International Telecommunications Union ITU, in developing countries, 16% fewer women than men use the Internet, compared with only 2% fewer women than men in the developed world (ITU, 2013).
The Broadband Commission Working Group on Broadband and Gender in a report in 2013 entitled ‘’Doubling Digital Opportunities: Enhancing the inclusion of women and girls in the information society’’ lamented the pervasive gap in access to ICTs globally.
According to the report, there are currently 200 million fewer women online than men, and this yawning gap could grow to 350 million in three years. The report also reveals that globally women are coming online later and more slowly than men. Out of the world’s 2.8 billion Internet users, only 1.3 billion are women. The report also states that women account for fewer than 20% of ICT specialists in developing economies and estimated that, by 2015, 90% of formal employment across all sectors will require ICT skills. The report additionally stated that 21% of women are less likely than their male counterparts to own a mobile phone – representing a mobile gender gap of 300 million. In Africa, only about half of the female population makeup the number of men connected to the internet.
Dr Johnson emphasised that from the above statistics, the disparity in adoption of ICT by women and girls globally reveal a big gulf between women and men in the adoption of ICTs that needs to be bridged. ICTs are powerful transformative tools that foster development and advancement of economies-whether developing or advanced. It is a useful tool for bridging the digital divide and plays a crucial role in the socio-economic empowerment and development of communities and nations across the globe. It is the bedrock of development and the leveraging of this critical tool not only helps to create wealth and jobs, but it also enables inclusive development at all levels- health, agriculture, education, development, trade etc.
The Ministry under the window of the Growing Women and Girls in Nigeria (GWIN) initiative of President Goodluck Jonathan, came up with three ICT intervention initiatives geared at empowering Nigerian women and girls to reduce the gender divide in the country. The gender based budgeting initiative aims to drive the economic and social inclusion of women in Nigeria. GWIN is being implemented through a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministries of Finance, Communication Technology, Agriculture, Water Resources, Health, Works and Women Affairs. Each Ministry receives extra-budgetary finance to develop and expand initiatives that catalyse the potential of Nigerian women. The Ministry of Communication Technology has three flagship initiatives under the GWIN programme – the Digital Girls Club, Huawei 1000 ICT Girls Training Programme and the Smart woman Nigeria project. The Digital Girls Club is an intervention to help girs develop an early interest in computers and in the field of ICTs as a whole – including considering careers in ICTs. . The Digital Girls Clubs was launched in March this year in I2 federal government girls’ schools across the six geopolitical zones to empower Nigerian girls and encourage them to embrace careers in ICTs. The second phase will commence in November 2014 when the Digital Girls online curriculum will be made available to all secondary schools across the country to kick start their own Digital Girls Clubs. The 1000 Girls ICT Training programme is a training programme geared at empowering young women with ICT skills to make them more employable and increase their chances of occupying vacant IT jobs in the country. 200 of the most promising girls out of the 1000 that will be trained (480 have been trained so far) will receive further training and certification as Data Centre Administrators , making them immediately employable in Huawei or other Data Centres across the country. The SmartWoman Nigeria Project, our third initiative is a mobile based platform for disseminating relevant and useful information to Nigerian women through their mobile phones. . SmartWoman offers learning, tips, advise and mentoring in communication skills, , managing finances, health, and family work/life balance, parenting amongst other things. The second phase of the SmartWoman project will offer these services free of charge to rural women based on the subscriptions to this platform of higher income women in the urban area
Nigeria believes that the social and economic transformation of Nigeria requires that the economically active population be empowered and productive. Women, a significant part of the economically active population traditionally tend to be marginalized, but ICTs provide a useful avenue for the inclusion and active participation of women in development. The Nigerian government recognizes ICTs as tools for empowering women and girls and has put in place policy frameworks to ensure that gender issues move from the side-lines of policy and decision making and are placed amongst the priorities. Our National ICT Policy and the National Broadband Plan call for a conscious effort to target women “who would not normally see the need for the use of ICT”. Implementation of the policies is exemplified by the gender-oriented projects of the Government listed above which are increasing interest and capacities of girls in ICT-related subjects, increasing employability of young women in ICT fields and expanding the knowledge and connectedness of Nigerian women through mobile phone technology.
