Is the cellular phone a tool for oppression or empowerment? An innovative new campaign by Girl’sNet, a daughter project of Women’sNet aims to ensure that the cell phones are are used to empower young South African women through positive self-expression.

The recent South African elections, held on April 22 2009, seem to be the most vibrant yet to grip the country. Political parties launched their manifestos and a striking issue was the absence of women’s concerns in the political parties’ agenda, in spite of the fact that women formed the majority of this years registered voters. This special edition newsletter on gender and politics by Women’sNet explores the question of women, gender and politics and will leave you wanting to read more…

Women in Africa may be accessing the internet, but are they getting the information they need? Whether they are students, members of civil society, leaders of indigenous communities or women and youth affected by HIV/AIDS, patents and copyrights are making it increasingly difficult for women in Africa to access the information they need. This edition of Gender Centred, a periodic bulletin produced by APC's programme for the GenderIT.org policy site, focuses on the challenges copyright and the lack of information exchange bring to those who need it most, and explores the different issues surrounding open source software, copyright and rights to information.

In the recent years, APC’s francophone community has grown significantly, and with this growth also came an interest for Gender Evaluations Method (GEM) training in French. Requests for the workshop have not gone unheard, and the GEM Francophone Workshop, co-organised by the Women’s Networking Support Programme (WNSP), APC-Africa-Women (AAW) and Afriklinks officially began today in Bamako, Mali. The small group of fifteen people is comprised of participants from all over Africa, including two GenARDIS grantees. The workshop, which is coordinated and facilitated by APC’s Dafhne Plou and Sylvie Niombo, aims to build capacities in gender evaluation, integrating a GEM practice in Africa, and other challenges related to gender and ICTs in Africa. Additional information and impressions can be found on the Afriklinks webiste (in French).

On the 6th of August 2008, Dafne Plou, an APC facilitator on the Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) with telecentres, visited Uganda on a mission of evaluating how ICTs impact the community within gender lines.

Handicrafts are an income-generating activity for many women in Egypt, but as producers these women often receive the lowest profit in the trading chain.

The 2007 Global Information Society Watch report identifies Nigeria as the fastest growing ICT market in Africa. Despite this, women remain severely under-represented among the country’s ICT professionals. And yet, one young woman in APC-member Fantsuam’s ICT department became a role model when she became the first woman to climb a communications tower in northern Nigeria.

Violence against women was the theme of a recent digital storytelling workshop organised by APC’s programme in Africa and APC’s South African member Women’sNet, held in Durban, South Africa from 25 to 29 August 2007. Seventeen women from throughout Africa gathered for one week to develop the skills to use technology for the creation of digital stories as a means of combating domestic, sexual and other forms of violence faced by African women.

In releasing the list of successful applicants in one of its small grants initiatives, APC’s women programme in Africa injected some real-life into the Swahili word "harambee" in March 2007. Blogs for African Women (BAWo) has taken hold of the Nigerian blogging spirit to strengthen women’s activism and by the same token, got awarded one of six Harambee small grants. Read about Networking for Success, BAWo’s second initiative getting Nigerian women into the blogosphere.