Millennium Development Goals: Challenges and opportunities for using ICTs to promote gender equality in Africa

Abstract

abstract This article examines how Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) can be used effectively to empower African women, promote gender equality and help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It argues that lack of gender analysis and inadequate understanding of social cultural contexts inevitably leads to differential impacts and benefits accruing from development processes between men and women. The author notes that, although ICT has been hailed as a powerful tool for empowering women, there are several challenges that exclude women from effective access to and use of ICT. She concludes that there is need to create an enabling environment for the promotion of gender equality and socially deconstructing ICTs to make them sensitive to the needs of women.