Women's Electronic Network Training (WENT)-AFRICA 2003
Hosted by APC-Africa Women
Written by Claire Mathonsi
In the tradition of Women's Electronic Networking Training - Asia (WENT ASIA http://www.aworc.org/went/index.html), the first ever Women's Electronic Network Training Workshop - Africa (WENT-Africa 2003), was held from 29th March to 4th April 2003 in Cape Town, South Africa. The Association for Progressive Communications-Africa-Women (APC-Africa-Women www.apcafricawomen.org) hosted the conference, the organisation being a network of organisations and individuals that work to empower African women's organisations to access and use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for equality and development. APC-Africa-Women is the Africa regional programme of APC's Women's Networking Support Programme. WENT Africa 2003 used the Asia and Pacific Women's Electronic Network Training Workshop as a model and methodology. The Asian WENT has proved to be a highly popular and successful methodology and has been held annually since 1999. The workshop was open to all women whose organisations play or will play a significant role in promoting the use of information and communication technology to enhance women's role and capacity in social and policy advocacy, as well as to strengthen women's organisations and networks in Africa. I attended the conference as a representative of the Association of Women in Human Rights Development (AWID - see www.awid.org).
The aims of the workshop were to train women's information providers in the effective and strategic use of computer and Internet tools and to deepen African women's organisations understanding of the gender issues in ICT policy work in order to encourage wider engagement of gender-focussed civil society organisations involvement. There was an objective to increase the level of cooperation and networking among women's information providers and existing women's information networks in the region and to promote the appropriate use of information and communication technology in the regional women's movement. There was also an aim to train women's information providers who will be able to assist other women in the use of Internet services and tools and to begin building an African women's ICT trainers network. An overall theme was the potential beneficial South-South partnership and skills-sharing exercise.
Building the capacities of women and their organisations for maximum and effective ICT use in social development work and policy advocacy work was framed within a two parallel instructional track system from which participants could choose the most appropriate for their training needs and two sessions in which all workshop participants were involved. These tracks covered skills training in topics such as Action Applications, which is the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) open source software for web content management, "housekeeping" for your computer, virus checks, opening attachments, file management, email list management, repackaging of information, convergence of old and new technologies with a focus on radio, and a gender and ICT policy engaging with the issues involved. This hands-on training ICT conference was lead by an all-women training team which has extensive experience in ICTs for women's empowerment.
African women from nine countries namely Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania (Zanzibar) (http://www.apcafricawomen.org/went_part.shtml) participated in the training in order to advance and expand their technological expertise in the lobbying and advocacy around women's issues in Africa. They came from areas such as leadership, health, HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, entrepreneurship, media, human rights and the like. The seven-day workshop not only promoted regional networking but also highlighted the importance of technological ICT know how in the advancement of social transformation in Africa.
ICTs are imperative to the successful mobilisation and advocacy around transformation
in Africa because of the ever-increasing dependency globally on these mediums.
Hearing the voices of these women brought home the point that the reality in
Africa is that ICTs such as radio enable essential cost-effective communication
between people with diverse technologies. This also highlighted the crucial
work that is done with the use of ICTs but the issue of access and infrastructure
are a hindrance to the vital work that is done by African women for their communities.
This conference thus empowered me in my knowledge and usage of ICTs and their
effective and strategic use, but it also provided me with added skills to deepen
my usage of them within the African Women's Movement. An essential element was
the focus on using my person as a tool to promote, train and assist women in
the use of ICTs; in other words to begin building an African women's ICT trainers
network.
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The conference's focus on the Internet packages and usage, radio production,
video, ICT policy internationally, continentally, nationally and locally imparted
knowledge on the effective and successful use of ICTs for advocacy and lobbying.
This was done from an organisational perspective together with an emphasis on
the access and provision of ICTs to women in different contexts and locations
in Africa. This information was useful for planning around the importance and
difficulties of getting women more involved with ICTs and developing analysis
and tools in relation to the usage of technology based on the requirements for
their communities.
Access, ownership and the creation of knowledge with regards to ICTs were a central theme for me. Knowledge production within the realm of ICTs is fuelled by unequal power dynamics that run directly through the centre of many of the great questions of modernisation and globalisation. The issues at hand involve geopolitics, and socio-economics, with gender affecting the form and movement of these forces. Thus women must not only use ICTs but also produce the knowledge accessed by them. Therefore it is crucial that women need to be creating their own knowledge with a parallel process of having access and ownership of ICTs. The conference highlighted the different ways that this could be done through context-specific programmes.
The third track around radio technology provided the participants with a first-hand session of producing one's own knowledge and the use of technology. The women involved not only produced material for radio but also were skilled through the use of radio technology and the ins and outs of the technological running of a radio station. WENT-AFRICA enhanced the capacity of development and human rights through the effective skills provision of the enhancement of technology.
WENT 2003 not only began to build an African women's ICT trainers network but also boosted essential links with Francophone Africa. Many of the participants came from organisations that worked with women and were involved with work around the provision of ICTs to women with a central aim to empower women and it was vital to ensure connections links around advocacy across Africa.
Participants described some of the expectations that were met as the identification of potential new partnerships and obtaining expertise in getting women involved in the ICT world despite coming from developing countries. It was pointed out that they learnt how to effectively encourage women to learn to engage with ICTs and use them. Participants also learnt about different forms of ICTs and how to adopt them to the work they do. Technological know-how was increased and the integration of ICTs and the empowerment of women was shared. A vital expectation that was reached was the agreement of looking into organising a Francophone WENT-AFRICA because the issue of language is a crucial one not only for conferences but also for the use of ICTs.
The issue of ICTs in Africa is a complex one. Access and usability are shrouded in debates that question ICT development over basic necessities, which is a valid concern in many areas in Africa. I think that it is important to note the diversity of ICT use and access in Africa. The participants were a group of women who had been introduced to ICTs in extremely diverse ways such as 'New Age Kids' or 'from telephone to the Web'. These stories can be found at http://www.apcafricawomen.org/went_rep.shtml. Working with these women not only provided me with vital connections within Africa but also provided me with tools to forward women through the portal of ICTs. An important message I left the conference with was the importance of local methods of communication such as drum beating to send messages as opposed to the focus of western technologies to not only spearhead transformation in Africa but also to mobilise women in Africa.
For a full report on WENT AFRICA 2003 go to http://www.apcafricawomen.org/went_rep.shtml