Over 250 of Africa’s leading technology innovators will gather October 9-11 in Accra, Ghana for the second Africa Summit on Women and Girls in Technology. The Summit – which came at a crucial point in time when the world is set to reach 50% connectivity — aimed to design solutions that will enable millions of African women and girls to benefit from access to technology and use their skills to build a better Africa for all.
Bridging the digital gender gap is a critical step toward the vision of a thriving Africa — yet research has shown that women in some communities are up to 50% less likely than men to be online. In Africa, where nearly 75% of the population remains offline, this problem is particularly acute.
The 2018 Africa Summit on Women and Girls in Technology was a collaboration between the World Wide Web Foundation, Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), Ghana Ministry of Communications, African Development Bank, Open Society Initiative for West Africa, Internet Society, Facebook, Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (Germany), Google, Swedish International Development Agency and UN Women.
Internet Society’s Activities
Tuesday 9 October 2018 – 14:00 (local time), Wednesday 10 October 2018 – 14:45 (local time)
The Internet Society supported a workshop on Community Networks with APC, A4AI, Tunapanda and Zenzeleni. The workshop introduced women and girls to the foundation concepts of community networks and provide basics of how to apply these concepts for starting and managing women-led community networks.
Lightning talk: Wednesday 11 October 2018 – 14:00 (local time)
Roundtable: Thursday 12 October 2018 – 9:45 (local time)
The Internet Society participated in a lightning talk to present its work on gender. We ran a roundtable during the session “Institutional Support for Women in Tech”.
Maud Adjele Ahong-Eloit from the Internet Society Ghana Chapter spoke about the Special Interest Group for Women and EQUALS Global Partnership.
