Close mobile gender gap in Africa to lift growth
WHEN women thrive, societies, businesses and economies thrive. However, despite Africa’s increasing connectedness, women are being left behind.
A 2015 report on the gender gap in mobile access and usage by the GSMA, an industry body that represents mobile operators, highlighted that in Africa, 27 million fewer women than men own cellphones and, that in some countries, such as Niger, women are 45% less likely to own a phone than men. Tackling the gender gap in cellphone ownership is a critical topic that the region’s governments and business leaders should be encouraged to address.
Mobile has the power to transform lives. It can reduce poverty and provide people with access to healthcare, education and financial services, often for the first time. More than 4.7 billion unique mobile subscribers all over the world are already benefiting from the social and economic advantages mobile connectivity brings, accounting for more than 7.7 billion connections.
However, although mobile connectivity is spreading quickly, it’s not spreading equally. GSMA research estimates globally there are 200 million fewer women than men who own a cellphone in lowand middle-income countries, and in Africa alone, more than 300 million women do not own cellphones.
Women are often disproportionately affected by barriers to use of mobile, such as cost, cultural issues and lower levels of digital literacy. Even when women do own a mobile device, they are less likely to use it for transformative services such as internet and mobile money, further widening the divide.
Closing the gender gap in cellphone ownership and usage in Africa will help to empower women, make them more connected, safer, and provide access to information and life-enhancing opportunities, such as health information, financial services and employment.
Achieving parity in ownership and use has the potential to unlock an estimated $20-billion (about R286-billion) market opportunity for Africa’s mobile industry between now and 2020.
The gender gap’s root causes are complex social, economic and cultural barriers that can only be overcome by targeted intervention by all stakeholders, including policymakers across Africa, in collaboration with the mobile industry.
African leaders can make significant strides towards achieving the UN’s sustainable development goal of gender equality and empowering women by addressing the imbalance in mobile usage. The theme for this year’s AU Summit, currently taking place in Kigali in Rwanda, is “African year of human rights” — and there is a particular focus on women’s rights.
As part of the GSMA’s mission to deliver the opportunities of the internet to all, it has launched the “Connected women commitment initiative” to help deliver digital and financial inclusion to millions more women in low- and middle-income countries by 2020. Mobile operators in Africa and beyond have pledged to increase the proportion of their woman customers accessing the internet and mobile money services.
Connecting more women will rely on the whole ecosystem working
Cellphone usage provides access to life-enhancing information about health, financial services and employment
together to tackle the accessibility and affordability of mobile ownership and use, improve usability for less digitally literate people, introduce services that are safe to use and discourage harassment and fraud, create products that meet women’s needs, and address underlying gender disparities and social norms that contribute to women experiencing these barriers more than men.
Women represent the most excluded segment of society in Africa. Mobile is crucial to changing that. Africa has much to gain from championing the empowerment of women through digital and financial inclusion, and the AU Summit will play host to what could be historic discussions about closing the digital gender divide and, ultimately, the future of the continent.
Granryd is the director-general of GSMA