Book title: African Women and ICTs
Authors: Academics in 11 African countries
Launched: February 11, 2010
Reviewed by: Arthur Baguma

GENDER roles or the socially constructed duties between men and women continue to generate debate among feminists. Scholars argue that gender roles perpetuate the imbalances in favour of men. Even with the advent of globalisation and modernisation, the same imbalances seem to be manifesting.

The revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs) has critical implications for the developing world. But what tangible benefits has it brought when issues of social inclusion and exclusion remain at large? And with the growing gender digital divide, particularly in Africa, what does ICTs mean to African women?

African Women and ICTs explores this challenge. The book is as a result of research in Africa into ICTs for empowerment.

Written by a group of experts across Africa and punctuated by testimonies of the African woman, the book suggests ways in which women in Africa can utilise ICTs to empower themselves, whether through the village mobile phone business, internet or new career opportunities.

Based on extensive field research by academics and activists in their own communities and countries across Africa, this book covers such issues as the notion of ICTs as agents of change, ICTs in the fight against gender-based violence and how ICTs could be used to reconceptualise public and private spaces.

All over Africa, ICT policy is currently being made and implemented. As this book argues, by becoming alert now to a gender dimension in ICT developments, Africa may be able to prevent more undesirable effects in future.

As ICTs increase the sense of being globally interconnected — it should not be used to create new challenges of exclusion and thus poverty and isolation within countries and between countries.
And this is actually what this book tries to expound.

It may, for the majority of African women, still be a long walk to freedom, to the type of self-determination they want, using ICTs to enhance their lives and the lives of those they love.

Their journeys cannot be seen and understood in isolation from the power of the global market economy and the pervasive gender images, and without recognising the immense inner strength they are drawing on.

And this is what this book has tried to explain. To make womens’ choices visible and understandable and to show how women’s power is not always the most obvious, their choices are not always in line with economic priorities, but immensely rational when understood in context of women’s triple responsibilities and their own priorities.

And the way women use ICTs often reveals exactly where they are at on their journey towards empowerment.