NOUN: We’re working towards closing digital gap among women

The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) says it is working to close the digital gap among women.

The institution said this at the Women in Digital Empowerment Network (WIDEN) workshop, which held on Friday.

According to Ganiyat A. Adesina, a professor of Economics at the university and the Principal Investigator for WIDEN, the programme is being funded by the British Council.

She said the vision is to disseminate the findings from their gender analysis and the need assessment survey they conducted.

She said, “We first started with baseline research, and then we moved to mapping out who are those that we want to be our target audience.

“The British Council wants us as a group to recommend to the Nigerian government to investigate and then recommend policy implications of women being excluded in the digital sector, especially in the tech world.”

In his remarks, the program consultant, Dr. James David Eladlu, who facilitated disability inclusion in the program, said the world is moving and Artificial intelligence has come to reshape many things, emphasising that digitalization is very key to every aspect of disability life.

He said, “This project is really going to bridge a lot of gaps in the digital space, especially for women and women with disabilities.”

He commended the initiators behind the project, saying the digital divide is almost bridging.

Speaking, Professor Christine Ofulue, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Technology, Innovation and Research at NOUN, who represented the VC, said the program is bridging the gap between women and men in terms of their participation in the digital environment context.

She urged more women to join, saying what is needed to be done is to market it and to disseminate the programme widely.

Dr. Angela Irene, the Chief Officer of Open and Distance Learning from the National Universities Commission (NUC) said that the program is timely for Nigeria, and for Africa as a whole.

She said, “We have to uplift women because women play a huge role in society. It is said that when you train a woman, you train your own nation. So, women have a lot, a really good role to play in society, either in remote areas, villages, anywhere in Africa.

She said NUC has a framework, adding that was why the commission wanted to see exactly what the presentations were about.

Abdulkarim Faussiyat, one of the participants and a PhD student, said the workshop boosted her research activities.

She said, “In my personal office, it has also boosted my ICT expertise. So, it’s a very good one and it broadened my horizons very well.”

Faussiyat urged the participants to take every bit of the WIDEN program seriously.

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