Pollicy has announced the rollout of the Digital Ambassadors’ Program in a move geared towards bridging the digital gender gap through training and empowerment of 200,000 young women with basic digital skills.
The rollout follows a research done in 2020 titled “Alternative Reality”. The research was conducted in five countries by Pollicy, a feminist collective of technologists, data scientists, creatives and academia working at the intersection of data, design and technology to craft better life experience while harnessing the quality of data that indicated that Uganda had experienced the highest number of online gender-based violence against women with a staggering figure of about 32.8%, followed by Ethiopia at 31%, Kenya 28%, Senegal 25 and South Africa with 23.3% according to the study.
According to Neema Iyer, the founder of Pollicy, the study found that 1-3 women had experienced some form of online violence. This she alludes to the fact that 30% of men are likely to own mobile phones as opposed to women. Coupled with the previously imposed OTT Tax, that gap was further widened with fewer women participating online.
Following these challenges faced by women, Pollicy has decided to launch the Digital Ambassadors Program to help build a more resilient and tech-oriented generation of women to deal with the aforementioned challenges.
“The launch of the digital ambassadorship program will provide safe navigation on the internet for all young girls. Our initiative is about tech that impacts society and we will be training and building a generation of tech-savvy women from now on and moving forward.” Neema said during an event that coincided with the celebration to mark Pollicy’s birthday
“We want to put more women in tech spaces that are predominately taken up by males, if they get to understand how this space works or even create their own tools on how to work best with technology then we would have moved a step further to the aspect of digital inclusion.” Said, Gilbert, Head of Programs, Pollicy.
Philip Ayazika, the Programs Manager at Pollicy, revealed that there are already ongoing talks and partnership deals with three Universities in Uganda and two in Tanzania where those selected through a rigorous process will be transformed digital/data technologies to engineer change.
Meanwhile, Navina Mutabazi, the Program Coordinator, Feminist Movement and Advocacy at Pollicy, noted that the DAP program will kick off with the training of 200,000 girls, 100,000 in Uganda and 100,000 girls in Tanzania who will shade a green light for Pollicy to reconsider expanding this program to other African countries.
