Women and modernity

Challenging the digital divide in Africa

An interview with Amolo Ng'weno, one of the founders of AfricaOnline and currently a board director


Edited by Ilaria Carnevali



The information revolution has become a powerful force, shaping every
World Conference against racism, NGO Forum, Durban, South Africa
Source: www.uwc.ac.za
aspect of social, economic and political interactions around the world. In Africa, where most of the population, particularly women, is excluded from reaping the benefits of this revolution, Amolo Ng'weno is both the exception to the rule and a symbol of the potential of information technology entrepreneurship. In this interview, she highlights the challenges and potential embedded in information and communication technologies, and she talks about the thrill and complexity of being a woman IT entrepreneur in Africa.

What led you to found Africa Online?
I have been interested in computer technology since I was a freshman at Harvard, where I used my first email in 1982. Although the Internet wasn't widely available to the general public in 1994 (Netscape only launched that year), I could see that email was becoming more and more popular and that Kenyans in the US were relying on it to share news from Kenya. When my partners, Ayisi Makatiani and Karanja Gakio (both Kenyans and both MIT graduates), suggested the idea of creating an Internet service provider in Africa, I thought the time was right. I left the World Bank and moved back to Kenya to set up our office in Nairobi.

Which were the obstacles and opportunities you encountered in this business venture, both as a co-founder and as managing director?
The principal obstacle at the time was the lack of knowledge about the Internet/email and its potential - both amongst policy-makers and the consumer market. We spent a lot of effort on public education and lobbying. The largest (and unfortunately ongoing) obstacle to the development of the whole sector was and is the high cost and low quality of telecommunications services. This is substantially due to inefficient network design (for instance a phone call form Ivory Coast to neighboring Ghana must pass through Paris and New York) and a history of insufficient investment by state monopoly phone companies. However, it is also due to international Internet and telecoms pricing inequities. The other major obstacle was our own inexperience and lack of management knowledge, especially when it comes to marketing. We learned a lot in the school of hard knocks!

How would you compare your educational and career opportunities to the
opportunities that Kenyan women have, especially in the field of technology?
 I was very fortunate to receive a great education and, as a result, my career opportunities were more numerous than those available to most Kenyan women. I was fortunate to have my father as a major entrepreneurial model and a family who never pressured me to follow the conventional "female" role and always fully supported my ideas and plans.

In your opinion, what are the major obstacles that African women face in
their access to and use of technology?
The major obstacles are financial and educational. Technology remains disproportionately expensive in Africa compared to incomes. In addition, our surveys have shown that you need a high school education to use the Internet. Sadly only a minority of our populations (and still fewer girls) achieve this educational level.

Students (girls) of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Source: www.uwc.ac.za

For those who have managed to make it past the education hurdle, and who have access to cybercafes, gender is less of an issue. Although there are relatively few women that are electrical engineers, I believe women are well represented in the ranks of graduates in computer science. However, for both women and men seeking to become entrepreneurs in the technology field, the main obstacles are financial constraints, which are further complicated by the anti-entrepreneurship attitude of the banks in almost all African countries. Women are more disadvantaged than their male counterparts because banks tend to demand securities that may be traditionally in the husband's name. In addition, the dual burden of home and family responsibilities means that women are not always able to put in the long hours that new businesses usually require.

UNIFEM is trying to engage African ICT entrepreneurs in the Diaspora to
work towards bridging the gender digital divide in Africa. Why did you join
the UNIFEM's initiative as a member of the advisory committee?
I thought it was a fantastic idea! But not an easy one to carry out... Through this initiative, I hope to use my experience and ideas to help UNIFEM address the challenges of women's access to technology in the African continent. I think we should work harder to publicize female entrepreneurship success stories because one of the things that all African entrepreneurs lack is role models, especially female role models. There are African women who have succeeded in their IT ventures on an international scale, and the committee will build on these examples and experiences.

Which are the major opportunities you see today in the ICT sector in the
African continent and what is needed for women to benefit from these opportunities equally?
IIn Africa, the major opportunity still lies in basic access: there is a high demand to expand Internet access, ICT Training and cybercafes. However, these are competitive fields with low barriers to entry, so more sophisticated types of businesses are likely to have a greater profitability: for example, software development ventures, call centers, financial transaction management, database management. But these types of businesses, which are suitable for female entrepreneurship, require not only greater technical knowledge but also, perhaps more importantly, knowledge of the world market. I hope that the UNIFEM initiative can help to bridge this knowledge gap, opening avenues of participation for women in the new economy, particularly through capacity building, the creation of business linkages for African women entrepreneurs, and actions at policy-making level.

What is your vision for the future of technology in Africa?
The worldwide explosion in technology use was not just a phenomenon of the Internet boom and I expect Africa will continue to have a major catch-up challenge ahead of it. I feel that the possible "leap-frogging" opportunities will be hindered by the inefficiencies and exorbitant prices of many ICT services in Africa, particularly telecom services, if resolute action is not taken to tackle these challenges.


AMOLO NG'WENO

Ms. Ng'weno, was born in 1969. She is a Kenyan IT-entrepreneur, educated in Kenya and in the U.S., is one of the funding members of AfricaOnline, one of the premier Internet Service providers in Africa. Ms. Ng'weno, currently a Board Director of AfricaOnline, stepped down from the managing director position in 1998, after AfricaOnline's sale by Prodigy to UK-listed company African Lakes plc. She has now set up an e-commerce venture, Biashara.biz, conceived as an online shopping site for African products, and is on the board of directors of the Zimele Asset Management Company, of Kelele.com (a cultural site for Kenya) and of Turnkey Africa (a software development company). In January 2002, she joined the Global Advisory Committee for a new initiative, launched by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), aimed at bridging the gender digital divide in Africa.



UNIFEM

The United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) promotes women's empowerment and gender equality. Since its creation, UNIFEM has supported numerous projects and initiatives throughout the developing world that promote the political, economic, and social empowerment of women. Recently, UNIFEM launched a new program, "Bridging the Gender Digital Divide in Africa though Strategic Partnerships". The program seeks to empower African women through innovative uses of Information Communications Technologies (ICT).