Strategic and Innovative Use of ICTs: WOUGNETS Soars High in the Use of SMS to share Information

Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) has explored the use of SMS in information sharing and carrying out SMS campaigns around different themes.

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, an international SMS campaign from 25/Nov – 10Dec 2007, with over 170 participants drawn from 13 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, was used as a strategy to call for the elimination of all forms of violence against women. A Women’s Day campaign was carried out from 25/Feb – 14/Mar 2008 lead by EASSI, a WOUGNET member organisation, with over 240 participants drawn from 20 countries in Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. The aim of the campaign was to raise awareness of the plight of the girl-child in Kenya during the post-election violence in the country.

Additionally in a test of Mobile Advocacy Tools, a campaign on ICTs and poverty reduction, was successfully carried out in April/May 2008 and proves that SMS is a powerful tool of information sharing. WOUGNET members, partners and interested persons discussed questions sent out by the secretariat on the theme, ‘ICTs: Is your wealth a click away? The campaign on ICTs and poverty reduction was wrapped up with a workshop organised for participants of the SMS campaign on 6th May 2008, for further discussion on the key issues arising. The SMS and workshop were also a contribution to the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2008 held on 17th May, 2008.

The workshop was opened by the Minister of State for ICT, Hon. John Alintuma Nsambu who emphasized the need for ICTs and the opportunities they offer to reach the most rural of the communities. He recognized that the civil society sector was doing much more than the Government in reaching out to the communities in the use and application of ICTs in various sectors of the economy. He commended WOUGNET for the innovative initiative and emphasized that as government they were challenged. He said ICT tools could be used to generate wealth and gave an example of a mobile telephone which could be used to generate income.

Ms Margaret Kakande, a poverty analysis made a presentation on the current situation of poverty in Uganda noted that natural causes and impacts of poverty are different for men and women. Gender inequality was persistent in access to and control of a range of productive, human and social capital assets. ICT has the potential of correcting some of the gender inequalities that limit women’s access/ benefit from development policies and programmes. Uganda's the economy has been liberalized and there is competitiveness in every sector including ICT. There is therefore need to enhance women’s productivity in agriculture and the SMEs through provision of information on markets, prices, inputs and other available public services and opportunities.

Participants called for the development of local content to enable people in rural areas understand and use it for development. Relevant content for the rural communities includes agricultural information, weather, market prices, pest and disease control, health information and mobile banking among others.

Another issue that strongly came out of the meeting was the need to include the interests and needs of people with disability in the National ICT policy framework and the poverty reduction strategies. A participant with disability reported that programs for people with disability don’t reach the grassroots according to the research they have carried out.

The chairperson of the parliamentary committee on ICTs, Hon. Edward Balidawa noted that ‘ICTs are catalysts, enhancers in development, in themselves they cannot stand alone. They can be useful in already established structures for example using SMS to reach out to market prices. There is need for transparency, paradigm change, good governance and for leaders to embrace use of ICTs. The challenge lies in showing that ICTs can be used to earn money, sensitizing communities, looking out for workable models that enable rural communities to earn extra income’.

The use of SMS has attracted a lot of interest from members because information can easily be accessed, mobile phones are affordable to many people even in rural areas and unlike emails they don’t have to travel long distances to get access to the information. SMS combined with face to face fora is a good way of reaching out and encouraging the rural communities to participate. This should be on going.

The detailed workshop report can be found here.

This article was taken from the WOUGNET website.

More on this:

Visit: http://www.wougnet.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=187&Itemid=1