BoP Women and Mobile Tech To commemorate International Women’s Day on March 8, the GSMA mWomen Programme published a study called “Striving and Surviving – Exploring the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid.” Drawn from 2,500 interviews with women (aged 16-64 in both rural and urban areas) living on less that $2 a day in Egypt, India, Papua New Guinea, and Uganda, the report looks at how mobile technology influences the way women approach health, economic development, and family relationships, and what mobile operators can do to reach more low-income women.
ICTs and Gender Speaking of women, USAID’s GBI Tech Talks recently hosted “How to Address Gender in your ICT Projects.” Feature speakers Siobhan Green, CEO of Sonjara, Inc. and Ann Mei Chang, Senior Advisor for Women and Technology at the U.S. Department of State focused on common challenges that prevent women from accessing ICTs, how to measure gender in ICT projects, and how to use technology to address traditional gender barriers in international development.
iHub Hackathon What do you get when you put leading digital innovators, creative practitioners, and a whole lot of entrepreneurial energy in a room together for 48 hours in four cities across Africa? If you’re in Lagos, Jo’burg, Nairobi, or Cairo, go and find out! Culture [Shift]
African Startups of Note Emerging technology tracker Memeburn showcases 30 brilliant African tech startups, from website building apps to cell phones to personal finance services and more. Exciting stuff.
From Francophone Africa Agence Ecofin is an African economic information organization based in Dakar and Geneva, offering the latest news on developments in African IT. Some are of special interest to the ICT4D community:
• In case you’re planning to work in Rwanda on any ICT4E projects, you should know that through OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), Rwanda distributed 80,000 laptops in 145 schools throughout the country in 2008. Now the second phase of the project is about to begin, with 100,000 additional laptops going to more schools as well as to administrative offices.
• Office 2010 is now available in Kiswahili in Tanzania.
• More than half of Algeria’s ICT imports come from China, with the United States, France, and Japan falling far behind. Good to know if you’re working on an ICT project in Algeria with USAID money!
Does Mobile Tech Affect Income? The Centre for Development Informatics at the University of Manchester publishes a working paper series that discusses the broad issues surrounding information, knowledge, information systems, and ICTs in the process of socio-economic development. The latest paper is “Understanding Mobile Phone Impact on Livelihood in Developing Countries,” in which Richard Duncombe writes about bridging the gap between the rapidly growing use of mobile phones and the lagging research on their effect on users’ income.
To get these links faster, follow me on Twitter: @SabinaBehague
Gender sensitivity is a common challenge to ICT and should be addressed in a diplomatic Manner women should be motivated so that they could approach it in a positive manner, this could make them boost there living standards.