DigitALL women👩💻📲
Issue #142: #DigitALL is a clarion call to bridge the digital gap for women globally.
Hello Venturer,
In the old days, people mostly communicated through written letters which took days or weeks to deliver. But the late 90s and early 2000s brought the internet and electronic mail.
First, Yahoo mail made it easy to send and receive e-mails in minutes via a computer. Then came GSM and the telecoms boom which made it easy for people to make and receive calls on the go, including text messages on their mobile phones.
Next, Blackberry and its ‘ping’ fever caught up with millennials. And from the 2010s, Android made it easier for people to communicate, work and do business seamlessly.
Amidst these evolutions, many people, especially African women, do not have digital access. According to Statista, 34% of the African female population had online access in 2022, compared to 45% of men. This means 66% of Africa’s female population is digitally excluded.
In commemoration of this year’s International Women’s Day theme DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality, we join our voices with the international community to call for digital access for more women across Africa.
Ishioma Imokhai-Bello,
Staff writer, Ventures Africa.
What’s new?
IWD2023#DigitALL: A call to bridge the digital gap for more women across Africa
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What are Bola Tinubu’s plans for Nigeria’s tech sector?
In October 2022, the former two-time governor of Lagos State unveiled an 80-page manifesto that Future Africa founder Iyinoluwa Aboyeji presented at a business summit in Lagos. The manifesto features a dedicated section on the tech ecosystem entitled “The Digital Economy: Taking Advantage of The Fourth Industrial Revolution” [pdf]. It outlines seven key areas, including service provision and outsourcing, manufacturing, e-commerce, and blockchain. Read more.
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Holiday Jollof
Read our special holiday issue on the events, businesses, people, and policies that impacted Africa in 2022. Click to read.
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