Bridging the digital gender divide

Context

Particularly in rural areas of Cameroon, women benefit too little from digitalisation, and their economic activities are restricted because of their gender. They lack access to basic knowledge about how they can develop, expand and secure their businesses with digital innovations.

A lack of digital inclusion measures means that women, especially in rural areas, are at risk of seeing their business profits decline. Access to the labour market can become more difficult for them, which increases the risk of internal migration. In addition, there is a risk that women will become dependent on men in the course of digital transformation, as men control access to important resources and networks as decision-makers and intermediaries.

Objective

Women micro-entrepreneurs in the unregistered economy who live in rural areas of the Ouest region can better harness economic opportunities.

Approach

The project improves gender equality, economic participation and digital inclusion. It thus contributes to socially just development in line with feminist development policy.

The focus is on supporting public, private and civil society partners who are implementing inclusive digital transformation. The project:

• Specifically supports local business incubators in adapting their support services so that women micro-entrepreneurs, in particular, are better integrated into local economic development
• Develops the entrepreneurial and digital capacities of women micro-entrepreneurs by offering targeted training, workshops and mentoring programmes
• Steps up dialogue to challenge the socio-cultural barriers for women to harness economic and digital opportunities
• Conducts studies and surveys on the digital gender divide and makes the results available to the public, enabling a network of practitioners to develop collaborative concepts to bridge the divide

Last update: August 2024