UNITED NATIONS:

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UNITED NATIONS
UNITED NATIONS
Gender and African Information Society Initiative
(AISI)
http//www.uneca.org/aisi/
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UNITED NATIONS
UNITED NATIONS
CONTENTS

• What AISI says about gender
• Gender in the AISI thematic areas
• National Information and Communications
  Infrastructure (NICI)
  
• SCAN-ICT
• Capacity Development
• The Way Forward

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What AISI says about Gender

• To achieve the strategic objectives of the AISI,
  each member State will need to consider ways of
  making the following actions an integral part of
  national plans and programmes
• Make special efforts to create awareness among
  those unfamiliar with the potential benefits of
  the African information infrastructure with
  particular attention to gender equity.

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AISI and Gender Identified Challenges

• Gender equity women constitute 50 per cent of
  the population but do 60 per cent of work, earn
  one-tenth of the income and own 1/100 of the
  assets
• Women generally have more limited access than men
  to technology in general, to information, the
  media and communication facilities
  
• Lack of readily available information on women in
  society, culture and economy.

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Gender in NICI preliminary analysis

• Analysis target Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde,
  Cote dIvoire, Egypt, Guinea, Malawi, Mali,
  Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia and
  Rwanda
• Out of 13 countries, Morocco has no mention of
  gender in their plans
  
• Some e-strategies created special gender
  programmes, while others aimed at integrating it
  into overall programmes and projects

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In the case of Malawi

• Extracted from An Integrated Socio-economic and
  ICT Policy and Plan Development Framework
  Document of Malawi
  
• "The deployment and exploitation of ICTs could
  further tilt the gender imbalance in the area of
  access and skills if special efforts are not made
  as part of policy and plan action programmes to
  avoid this"
• Vision 2020 Statement

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• Broad Policy Area in the case of Malawi
• Gender issues must be taken into account in all
  aspects relating to the formulation and
  implementation of national information and
  communication policies and strategies.
• Policy instruments must be put in place to
• ensure the participation of women in the
  formulation of ICT policies at all levels
  
• (ii) to ensure that information and communication
  policies at all levels are engendered, and geared
  toward meeting specific developmental needs of
  women

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NICI from Gender Perspectives in General

• Limited awareness among gender focal points, CSOs
  and women on the importance of e-strategies and
  the impacts on their lives
  
• Limited participation in consultation processes,
  implementation and evaluation of the ICT
  policies, plans and strategies
  
• which might have resulted in ICT policies not
  fully reflecting womens needs and aspirations
  
• Implementation mechanisms have been weak with no
  responsible ministries and agencies assigned for
  monitoring and evaluation of gender aspects
  
• Lack of awareness on gender among ICT focal
  points in various sectors

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How to ensure gender mainstreaming in NICI
MDG
PRSP
Overall NICI Goals
Sectoral Gender Policy and Plan
Mainstreaming Gender in Various Sectors/Networks
Monitoring and Evaluation
Gender Network
NICI Policy Process
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How to ensure gender mainstreaming in NICI

• NICI Visions and goals to ensure that gender
  issues are placed at the core of the NICI policy
  and plan
  
• Sectoral Policy and Plan to operationalize
  gender activities with a sustainable structure of
  coordination and implementation
  
• Mainstreaming in various sectors/networks to
  ensure that gender concerns are taken into
  account
  
• Monitoring and evaluation to keep track of
  equitable participation of men and women

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• Monitoring NICI Implementation SCAN-ICT
• NICI methodology is a more powerful tool in
  combination with SCAN-ICT initiative
  
• SCAN-ICT an initiative to monitor progress and
  achievements made in the Information Society

Selection of Indicators
Collection of data
Validation
Formulation
NICI Cycle
Development of Methodology
Approval
Consultation
Implementation
Baseline Study
Compilation of reports
Evaluation
Evaluation
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SCAN-ICT Project Benchmarking the Information
Society

• An initiative of ECA, IDRC (Acacia), European
  Union and NORAD launched in 2001
  
• To benchmark the Information Society (outcome of
  WSIS) - to collect and manage key information
  needed to support the growing investment in ICTs
  as well as the transition of Africa to an
  information society
• Six pilot countries Ethiopia, Ghana,
  Mozambique, Morocco, Senegal, Uganda
  
• Outcomes integrated into Ghana and Uganda
  e-strategies

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SCAN-ICT Project Gender disparities in Ethiopia

• The proportion of IT professionals in the total
  employees of the educational institution is only
  3. Female professionals account for about 22 of
  the total IT experts.
• The total number of IT students enrolled in the
  tertiary institutions in 2001/02 was 2442, from
  this about 27 were females.
  
• Females constituted only 23 of the IT employees
• However, gender disaggregated data not
  systematically collected and analysed

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SCAN-ICT and Gender Phase II

• The second phase of SCAN-ICT to start in July
  2005
  
• One of the lessons learned from the phase I how
  to mainstream gender in the Initiative
  
• What The Gambia can do to start the discussion
  on how SCAN-ICT can help monitoring and
  evaluation of the NICI implementation from gender
  perspective

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Capacity Development

• In partnership with the Division for the
  Advancement of Women (DAW) of UN HQ, organizing a
  series of sub-regional workshop to build capacity
  of national machineries
• Supporting the capacity building of women
  entrepreneurs in e-commerce through the
  Enterprise Development Facilities (Lome and
  Kampala)

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Outreach and Parntership

• Organized the Gender Forum during the Second WSIS
  Regional Preparatory Conference in Feb 2005 in
  Accra
  
• The establishment of a regional network of
  national machineries in November 2005 in Tunis
  
• Stakeholders workshop to continue in Swaziland
  and other countries
  

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