CTA's ICT Update

Dan Kisauzi, managing consultant at the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), explains how local rural development organisations can make use of crowd-funding.

Hudson Wereh Shiraku is a project assistant at Biovision Farmer Communication Programme. He runs a blog about youth and agriculture and uses ICTs as advocacy tool to promote organic agriculture. 

Anne Webb explains that ICTs can contribute to women’s empowerment when contextual economic and social power relations are recognised.

As a global social entrepreneur Sheida Mutuku does a great deal of research. She keeps up with global trends in social entrepreneurship and ICTs help to collect, share and store the information.

Text to Change´s cell phone-based programmes can be helpful in improving women’s awareness on healthcare, well-being and issues related to sexual behaviour and family planning.

In Zimbabwe, the cost of cell phone usage remains quite high, but women entrepreneurs have benefited from improved access to mobile communication technology.

A text message-based helpline helps women in Guatemala to prevent and report physical and sexual abuse. Text messages are not only cheap but also much less intimidating for victims of violence in their delicate search for help.

In a rural village in the Dominican Republic, women are using video cameras to fight against the community's ICT gender imbalance.

Two projects, one in Kenya and one in Burkina Faso, show that female farmers have better access to ICTs and are using them to improve their livelihoods. However, there is still a gender digital divide, and some profound problems are preventing women from benefiting from ICTs.