Mainstreaming ICT in national gender empowerment agenda
By Mercy Wambui, Communication Officer, ECA
28 September 2005

The Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) of the United Nations Secretariat and the Development Information Services Division (DISD) of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) begun a 3-day meeting "Strengthening the capacity of national machineries through the effective use of ICT" from 28 to 30 September 2005 at the United Nations Conference Centre, Addis Ababa.

National machineries are government gender units or focal points set up to support gender equality and gender mainstreaming in the development frameworks of member States as outlined in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

The meeting is a culmination of 4 sub-regional workshops, held in the past year to train national machineries in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and build their capacity in ICT policy formulation as part of the implementation of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI). The workshops also focused on knowledge management and information sharing.

The sub-regional workshops were organized in Namibia for Southern African member States in April 2004, in Senegal for French-speaking Western African countries in May 2004, in Ethiopia for Central and Eastern African countries in January and May 2005. So far, 132 participants from 42 member States have received ICT training in these workshops.

Ms. Roselyn Odera, Chief, Gender Analysis Section of DAW, noted that the purpose of the meeting was to share experiences and challenges in utilizing ICTs to advance gender empowerment, and to identify the key obstacles and support needed for the National Machineries in the future.

“The meeting will also agree on a proposal for a regional electronic network to serve as a support mechanism for the National Machineries as well as prepare a declaration to be presented in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that takes place in Tunis in November 2005,” she said.

On his part, Mr. Chukwudozie Ezigbalike, Officer-in-Charge, DISD, emphasized the timeliness of the initiative within the regional and global contexts. He noted, “This regional workshop will assess what has been done so far by national machineries in applying the newly acquired knowledge and skills in their work and promoting gender equality in the Information Age.”

For more information, contact: Atsuko Okuda (aokuda@uneca.org)