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My contribution is :
Call on Governments, Private Sector, Media, Civil Society, and International Organisations to:
1) Integrate and promote gender perspectives in the development of public policy through the integration of gender equality targets and key performance indicators into strategies, policies, plans and budgets, with a specific focus on ensuring policy dialogue at the grassroots level between public policy decision-makers, media and civil society, particularly women and youth. This must entail synergies between all ministries and government agencies, for effective gender mainstreaming.
2) Address the barriers women face in both access, use, and production of local content on the internet that impede gender equality online, and promote:
a. unlimited and unfettered access to affordable internet;
b. women’s safety and digital rights online, as well as the use of ICTs to ensure women are involved in the fight against online harassment, trolling, and bullying, violation of privacy, radicalisation and violent extremism;
c. digital equality, literacy and skills, and confidence, through the promotion of multi-stakeholder and public-private partnerships to promote digital citizenship, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship;
d. availability of relevant and localised content, applications, and services developed by and for women and girls;
e. mobilisation of and dialogue with communities working already on gender data-driven initiatives, and work to minimise duplication of efforts while maximising the scalability of interventions.
3) Support concrete multi-stakeholder cooperation, with a focus on the Francophone Africa region, through the development of tools and policies to support local, national and international efforts; effective sharing of best practices and methodologies to address the digital gender gap, as well as the development of sustainable and scalable initiatives, working with grassroots and international organisations of women and girls, public policy decision-makers, the private sector, and innovators and entrepreneurs, to ensure the expansion and scaling of successful initiatives and best practices. Consider the implementation of periodic convenings to foster knowledge exchange and accountability of governments.
4) Commit to and advocate for the collection and analysis of gender-based data. Secure resources to enable gender data collection and dissemination to monitor progress on digital equality. This data must be open to all to see, open licensed, and machine-readable; open gender data is essential in encouraging regional accountability and enabling transnational knowledge exchange.
5) Advocate for appropriate financial investment from international, regional, sub-regional, national, and local funding mechanisms to ensure the implementation of the aforementioned policies and programmes developed to promote gender equality in the online sphere and ICT sector.
6) Accelerate the adoption, consolidation and implementation of requisite legislation, such as Right to Information laws and rights-based cybersecurity laws, integration of cyber security and mobilisation on the dangers of ICTs in gender policies and programmes.
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