ICT as a Tool for Empowerment in Uganda

This 57-page paper investigates the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for women’s empowerment in Uganda. The case studies were identified through the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), a network of women's organisations who have been active in using and promoting ICT as a tool for women's empowerment since 2000. According to the report, the women involved in the study apply a broad understanding of ICT as covering various means of information collection, exchange, and distribution, including both conventional and new media. Different media platforms are used in a complementary manner and suggest the value of a diversity of media types and platforms rather than a focus on a few media types. Further, the research indicates an approach that emphasises ICTs and their functionality and information provision, stressing the "sourcing, repackaging and dissemination of relevant information via ICTs."

The study is structured in two parts, one focusing on the rural Apac district in northern Uganda, the other on the urban capital, Kampala. The analysis focuses on whether and how ICT usage has improved the women's livelihoods and their participation in public life. It explores three themes: access, freedoms, and resources to communicate. It also examines how the use of ICTs has influenced structures of public and private life.

According to the author, the role of ICTs varies somewhat from Apac to Kampala. In Apac, there is particular stress on agricultural and health-related information, improved communication within the community, and confidence-building. In Kampala, the focus is more on engendering ICT policies, podcast, and video as means to share experience, and the role of the internet as a platform for communication, networking, and online visibility. The internet is seen as significant for improving the women's economic and social situation in Kampala; it plays a minor role for women in Apac, where ICT use is dominated by conventional media and the creation of spaces for conversation and dialogue seem just as important as access to ICTs.

The importance of ICT capacity building, both in the form of training and as knowledge and experience sharing, is emphasised in both settings. Also, both settings indicate that ICTs have facilitated some changes with regard to public/private domains, thus strengthening women’s public voice, appearance, and participation in political life.

The study concludes that ICTs have played a role for improved livelihood and participation in public life, though the facilitation of new spaces for conversation and collaboration has been just as important as the technology itself. Such projects have facilitated structures of debate and exchange, increased information access amongst the rural farmers, and are slowly enhancing women’s ability to control their own economic resources, to associate, to seek relevant information, and to speak their mind. Further, as women increasingly appear as public voices, issues that were previously dealt with in the private sphere, e.g., domestic violence and lack of women’s rights, increasingly become matters of public concern. On the other hand, the report also mentions that the majority of women in Uganda remain without access to means of communication and are entangled in structures of inequality.