Pollicy to Impact 1m African Females by 2040 with Digital Program

Emma Okonji

Pollicy, an African feminist civic technology collective, whose research spans across the use and implementation of data and technology to engineer social change among women, has promised to train over one million African females by 2040, using its Digital Ambassadors program.

The digital program, which will be launched in Uganda and Tanzania, and later in Nigeria and other African countries, targets 200,000 females in Uganda and Tanzania, in the first instance, before spreading to other African countries to raise the target to one million by 2040.

The initiative, which is being celebrated to mark the fifth anniversary of Policy team’s operation, and in honour of the International Women’s Day celebration, is dedicated to bringing swift solutions to the problems and continued prevalence of the digital gender divide that disportionately affect young women across sub-saharan Africa and the larger African continent, by fostering the absence of economic well-being on the continent.

Policy seeks to up-skill women digitally and include more young women in the digital space and give them access to digital tools and more meaningful digital use, create swift impact by implementing initiatives that address the main facts that can close the digital gender divide -access, digital literacy and online safety.

Speaking during a recent webinar organised by the Policy Team, its Founder and Managing Director, Neema Iyer, said the Digital Ambassadors Program would promote initiatives and projects that would tackle the great societal challenges and biases such as harmful societal norms and inequitable access to education that have encouraged the marginalisation and exclusion of women in participating and benefiting from the growing digital ecosystem in Africa.

Programs Manager at Pollicy, Phillip Ayazika, stated that the program launch would not only mark the five year milestone of Pollicy’s impact across East Africa, but also usher its further contributions to causes that are prevalent in all regions of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly problems associated with limited digital access, literacy and online safety from women in sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the speakers at the webinar, Irene Mwendwa, who identified lack of legislative framework to protect women and girls online across African countries, said Policy had also established relationships with government bodies in most African countries to address the lack of legislative framework that will protect women and girls while browsing online.