Using information communication technologies for gender and development in Africa: A case study of UNIFEM and FEMNET

This study examines how development organizations and Feminist Networks have incorporated Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as part of their efforts to increase women's empowerment. The study focuses on two organizations: the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), a development agency and the African Women Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), an African feminist organization based in Kenya. The primary question addressed in this study is this: what do these organizations mean when they argue that "ICTs empower women"?; Using document analysis, this study analyzes the documents and ICT activities of UNIFEM and FEMNET over the period 1995-2005 in Africa. The study reveals that the ICT related development initiatives enacted by UNIFEM and FEMNET generally disregards class relations among women, ignores older technologies (i.e., focuses on new ICTs), and assumes that access to new ICTs is a panacea to all the development challenges faced by women in Africa. This discourse therefore ignores the existence of many highly skilled indigenous women in Africa who have historically been active participants of using old communication technologies such as radio to address women's rights issues. Thus, the use of ICTs as a meaningful tool to be appropriated by those on the margins of society (mostly poor, rural and non literate women) has not been realized.; This dissertation argues that for ICTs to be used as a tool to empower women economically, socially and politically, there should be a bottom-up approach where poor, non-literate and rural women act as their own experts by actively using these new technologies in combination with the old (such as radios and videos) to address their own needs.