Project Title	Networked women-led Multipurpose Community Telecentre for Africa - Toward an Pan-Africa Telecentre Ecosystem
Project Short Title	Networked women-led MCTs for Africa
Start Date	December 2007
Estimated End Date	December 2010
Government Coop. Agency	Ministries of Communications, Regulatory bodies, Ministries of Education.
Implementing Agency	International Telecommunication Union
Project Site	ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland
Beneficiary Country	Sub-Sahara African countries
ITU Project Manager	TBD

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play a major role as a catalyst for economic and social development, ICTs are tools through which gender equality can be advanced, and are integral to the creation of societies in which both women and men can substantively contribute and participate.

Africa is not only lacking of the ICT infrastructure such as broadband backbone, access network or ICT devices and equipments, but also goes short of human capacity and ICT professionals. The disparities observes 20 years ago between and within the countries of the "missing link", still persist. The development of ICT needs an equal access to and benefits of the potentials provided by the development of ICTs for women and men.

African women shoulder more responsibilities in their society particularly in ensuring that adequate food is available. Due to economic migration to urban areas, in most rural areas women need to find solutions to sustain the entire family in an environment where communication facilities are non-existent to help them fulfil their responsibilities. It has been noted that availability of ICT infrastructure is a prerequisite for improving the basic economic conditions and lifestyle of a country's population, and that women and children are the most affected by poor economic conditions. This is particularly difficult in Africa where more than 70% of population is made up of women and children.

The Millennium Development Goals (MGD) and the outcome of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) stress the need to promote gender equality towards all-inclusive information societies. There is a need to increase awareness of gender issues among African countries; to establish partnerships with Sector Members in order to develop and/or support specific ICT projects that target women in developing countries and in countries with economies in transition; and to encourage Sector Members to promote gender equality in the ICT sector through financial commitments to specific projects involving women.

The main objective of this project is to assist African countries to provide equal access to and benefits of the potentials provided by the ICTs development with the aim to set up a Pan Africa women-led telecentre ecosystem. The project will also provide a series of training programmes to improve gender balance in human resources development.

African women's fundamental contributions in their households, food production systems and national economies are increasingly acknowledged, within Africa and by the international community. But women in Africa continue to face enormous obstacles. The growing recognition of their contributions has not translated into significantly improved access to resources or increased decision-making powers. The material conditions under which most women live and work continue to deteriorate in many countries due to economic and social decline, wars and conflict, and the spread of AIDS. Women constitute the majority of the poor and the illiterate in both urban and rural areas in Africa.

ICTs are tools for providing access for all. But for women who are often in the economically insecure, marginalised groups ICTs can be especially potent tools for economic and social advancement. Promoting gender access and inclusion to ICTs should be considered primarily an issue of opportunity since ICTs can help women enhance economic and social empowerment and greater political participation. The challenges to women's access to ICTs in many African countries stem from, among others, lack of education, lack of income, social attitudes towards female usage of technology, balancing between role of a mother and a worker, lack of relevant content on the Internet for women's needs. Ultimately this leads to lesser life chances and opportunity for economic and social empowerment of women.

About nine years ago, the World Telecommunications Development Conference held in Valletta, Malta in March 1998 adopted a resolution that established the Task Force on Gender Issues within the Development Sector of the ITU. This resolution was unanimously supported and reaffirmed at the 1998 Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis. In accordance with Resolution 44, the World Telecommunications Development Conference held in Istanbul, Turkey in March 2002 reiterated the mandate to the working group on gender issues, and the Resolution 70 of the Plenipotentiary Conference, Marrakesh, 2002, included the gender perspective in the work of the Union. The outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society, namely the Geneva Declaration of Principles, the Geneva Plan of Action, the Tunis Commitment and the Tunis Agenda have stressed the need to promote gender issue. Resolution 55 on "Promoting gender equality towards all-inclusive information societies" was adopted during the World Telecommunications Development Conference, Doha, Qatar in March 2006 and this resolution was unanimously supported and reaffirmed at the 2006 Plenipotentiary Conference in Antalya, Turkey.

Aimed to ensure that the benefits of telecommunication applications are made available to all women and men in developing countries on a fair and equitable basis, over the period of last 4 years, ITU/BDT has carried out a number of activities in the development and implementation of projects that target women's access to ICTs among Member States.

Deployment and exploitation of ICTs

Africa is lagged behind the other regions of the world in the deployment and exploitation of ICTs. In general, African countries have non-existent or low-capacity national transmission backbones, international links and non-existent or poor access network in rural or remote areas. Some of the key ICT indicators based on data from 2005 speak for themselves. Though there are significant variations between the sub-regions and countries, and between urban and rural areas. The African countries have the lowest average in terms of fixed telephone lines per 100 inhabitants, mobile cellular subscribers per 100 inhabitants, Internet users per 100 inhabitants and many other indicators. Africa's PC penetration is 2.2 per 100 inhabitants compared with 6.4 in Asia and 35.3 in the Americas. Total price for access to the Internet is about 170% of Gross National Income (GNI) per capita in Africa compared to the 62% world average. Among 12 countries with no web presence in 2005, 8 are African countries. Africa accounts for 4% of global investments in this sector (estimated at US$ 8 billion in 2005). Africa counts about 13.8% of the world's population but Africa has about 163 million telephone subscribers (cellular= 136m and fixed= 27.4m), while the world total is about 3.4 billion subscribers.

Legal framework and government commitment

During the last two decades, a number of organisations were formed to work towards the goal of women empowerment, with a special area of focus (education, women's human rights, micro-finance, information generation and management etc…) that add value to the whole process. Since the early 1990s, many more women's associations have been formed or revitalized, and the quality of their work has improved significantly. These groups have taken advantage of new political openings in many countries to raise issues in new ways and to form alliances with other civil society groups to advance women's rights. Many governments have ratified conventions and international legal instruments on women's rights. In order to provide ICT access to women, some governments have mandated relevant Ministries such as Ministry of Gender and Promotion of women's rights, to follow up the implementation of women-led telecentres. However, not all the countries having ratified conventions have enacted them into national law. Moreover, many women are ignorant of the existence of laws that recognize their rights and can be invoked for their protection.

Women's education and access to ICT

While technical skills for access and use of ICTs require more than just and primary education, the majority of women in many countries are relegated to illiteracy. Africa's women are among the least advantaged globally in terms of access to education and new technologies. Africa's women encounter disadvantages in access to ICT and education at all levels, and there are huge gender disparities in education and ICT access across countries. Lack of access to formal education and training has been identified as a key barrier to women's employment and advancement in society. Research has indicated that there is a direct link between female literacy and economic growth of a country. Attainment of secondary education by females tends to lead to higher growth rates.

Though there have been improvements in the net enrolment of girls at primary levels, in many African countries, due to the conservative patriarchal nature of most tribal or religious cultures, there is much work to be done to reach equality for women.

The main objective of this project is to establish 100 networked women-led Multipurpose Community Telecentres across sub-Sahara countries in Africa. The objective of establishing these MCTs is to:

• Assist beneficiary countries to provide equal access to women and benefits of the potentials provided by the ICTs development.

• Provide ICT training to women (and children or other disadvantaged populations) through a series of training programmes.

• Improve gender balance in human resources development and improve the basic economic conditions and lifestyle of the population. Help the integration of gender perspective in community, commercial and government activities.

• Develop appropriate and needed local contents.

• Enhance the MCTs' sustainability through creation of competencies and skills specialized communities (pole of competencies, such as IT, finance, marketing, management, tourism, agriculture and fishing) among the participating countries that will allow the deployment of region wide revenue-generating activities.

• Establish the mechanism for the hiring, exchanging or deploying created expertise among the participating countries at a larger scale.