Ugandan women drive for ICT-based entrepreneurship

Details: Michael Schwartz; Category: Trends & Forecasts; 28 May 2007; 9339 views

Following its successful conference this February, the Women of Uganda Network is leading a drive both for greater female involvement in ICT and also for women to set up more businesses. We look at an all-too-rare initiative... Following its successful conference this February, the Women of Uganda Network is leading a drive both for greater female involvement in ICT and also for women to set up more businesses. We look at an all-too-rare initiative.

The Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) has published its Women's ICT-based Enterprises Handbook and in addition a CD entitled 'A Guide to Promote, Initiate and Improve Women's ICT Based Enterprises in Uganda.' Such initiatives are seldom found in either the developed or the emerging markets, the book and CD owing their release to a meeting held in February.

This gathering was entitled 'More and Better Women's ICT-based Enterprises Workshop in Uganda' and comprised one element of the Women's ICT-based Enterprises (WIE) project. WIE's goal is the creation of more and better women's ICT based enterprises in Uganda that will be majority-owned and/or run by women and that will operate in the ICT sector. The WIE project in Uganda is part of the global Women's ICT Enterprises Project coordinated by Dr Richard Heeks of the University of Manchester, UK.

The workshop also targeted women and key stakeholders engaged in promoting women's access to ICT so as to share experience of support and operation of women's ICT-based enterprises, drawing from the experience of participants. The latter came from a cross-section of ICT practitioners including ICT service vendors, Internet Service Providers, Mobile Communication Network service providers, ICT service retailers (such as women selling call services and village phone services sellers), system developers, multimedia consultants, proprietrices of secretarial bureaux, Non-Government Organisations, the National Planning Agency (NPA), academic institutions such as the Department of Gender at Makerere University, and the Ministries of Gender, Labour and Social Development and of Works, Housing and Communication.

As a follow-up to the workshop, WOUGNET has produced a localised WIE Guide and CD. The objective is to harness ICTs for socio-economic development. WIEs can provide women with immediate benefits such as jobs, income, skills empowerment etc. The WIE guide and CD are a tool to enable understanding of how this happens. Both are available at the WOUGNET Secretariat.

The handbook is in three languages: English and two local languages, Luganda and Luo. The CD contains the WIE workshop report and photos, a keynote speech by Dr Margaret Kigozi, Executive Director of the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA), the localised support guides and radio scripts in English, Luganda and Luo, as well as free software.

The WIE project in Uganda is supported by the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester with funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) as well as an advisory group composed of Ugandan participants from an Indian workshop held in August 2005 when the English-language version of the handbook on supporting women's ICT-based enterprises was reviewed.

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