ICTforAg 2020 Recap

Shrinking the Gender Digital Divide

The session covered challenges faced by women in accessing digital technologies as well as possible solutions and initiatives to reduce the digital gender divide

Key Takeaways:

  • Lack of smartphone ownership, relevant content, and tech-based training that fits the cultural context are some of the key barriers restricting the usage of mobile applications by women.

  • Service providers should focus on identifying lists of technology needs and incorporating them while creating app content.

  • Combining health, education, and nutrition parameters with technology may improve the relevance of mobile applications for women farmers.

  • The application should have text-free interfaces such as video or audio to address literacy issues.

In this session, the panelists talked about some key challenges faced by women in accessing digital technology, and some gaps in the existing mobile applications and platforms that act as barriers for women customers. They also shared their perspectives on possible action points to meet the needs of women in agriculture. Further, the panelists showcased the initiatives taken by their representing organizations to improve women's access to digital tools.

Challenges:

  • Poor accessibility and affordability: Research shows that only 8% of women farmers have access to agriculture mobile apps and platforms, although they account for as much as 50% of the agriculture workforce. Further, women are 8% less likely than men to own mobile phones, and 20% less likely to use mobile internet. 

  • Barriers for accessibility and affordability- Cost, literacy and digital literacy levels, time, scope for mobility, safety, and various cultural and social norms

Key discussion pointers: 

The panelists discussed why agricultural mobile applications do not fit the needs of women farmers, mainly covering issues such as lack of relevant content, lack of tech-based training that fits the cultural context, and lack of smartphone ownership among women farmers. 

Potential action points:

Based on the experience and interactions with women farmers, the panelists highlighted potential areas of interventions which will make mobile applications be better suited for women farmers. These included: 

  1. Develop a clear list of technology needs and incorporating them while creating app content 

  2. Blend parameters around health, education, and nutrition with tech in order to improve its relevance for women farmers 

  3. Design online avatars that look like their community members in order to bring in cultural context 

  4. Have text-free interfaces such as video or audio to address literacy issues 

  5. Incorporate emerging tech and AI while developing new applications 

Programs and initiatives focused on improving access to technologies for women in agriculture:

The panelists discussed programs and initiatives that are focused on interventions to improve access to technology for women. These included:

  • GSMA’s Agritech Programme

    The Agritech Programme aims to drive digital services to improve financial inclusion and climate resilience of smallholder farmers in the developing world. As part of the programme, GSMA had launched an Innovation Fund in 2019, wherein stakeholders in the field including agribusinesses, mobile money providers, and consumers collaborated to understand digital needs and use cases in agriculture and build targeted financial products. Further, the project included onboarding a specified proportion of women users as part of the total customer base, as well incorporating a gender lens, when developing mobile devices, with a focus on developing features that will benefit women users, such as having a voice interface, offering services in the local language, ensuring affordability, and deploying women agents to market and explain the services to women customers.

  • FinEquity: Enabling Women’s Financial Inclusion through Digital Financial Literacy (DFL)

    Digital financial literacy (DFL), also called digital financial capability, sits at the intersection of digital literacy and financial literacy and enables users to take full advantage of DFS. DFL focuses on aspects including social norms, design, access, numeracy, consumer awareness and literacy as tools to build digital financial literacy for women.

  • The G7 Partnership for Women’s Digital Financial Inclusion in Africa

    The G7 Partnership aims to work with governments to accelerate the use of digital financial services throughout Africa. It aims to support over 400 million African adults, of which 60% would be women. The initiative is supported by five key pillars: (i) building an interoperable digital payment infrastructure to enable customers to transact across service providers, (ii) building digital identification systems to ease the opening of bank accounts, (iii) improving the financial regulatory frameworks to ensure the development of inclusive digital products, (iv) putting in place investment phases and policies with a view to ensure good economic and social returns from the digital infrastructure, and (v) conducting the required research to design financial systems and deliver digital financial services while maximizing gender equality.