First ICT workshop for northern women held

According to the participants, the relevance of the workshop could not be overestimated and could not have come at a more opportune time considering the fact that the Northern region rates third among the most poverty-endemic regions in the country. Some of the concerns they raised included the need for parents to place much priority on the education of the girl-child especially on ICT. They stated that information rules the world and since majority of Ghana’s population is made of women, the nation could not be abreast of modernity if she did not place priority on women acquisition of information.

Presenting a paper on “The Northern Woman and ICT-Opportunities and How to Use Them”, Madam Rosemond Kumah, the Northern sector Director of ISODEC, an NGO enumerated challenges impeding development of women in Northern region prominent among which is cultural dehumanizing practices. According to her, “The social construct has made her (northern woman) very submissive and will seldom be heard if even she is right- not very assertive. View the opposite sex as “Lords” who are fit for the best like serving of meals”. Madam Rosemond was of the view that this situation has contributed to Northern woman not placing “high value on education till recently”.

In presentation on “the State of ICT in the North”, Agbenyo John Stephen, a resource person recapped the state of ICT in the 1990s in the region and the current situation. Until 1996 when state-owned Radio Savanna was established, there was no radio station in the region. Currently some three private stations are fully operating in the area whiles one is on test transmission and others who already have license are in the pipeline. The same applied to telephone networks. It started with Ghana Telecom when One Touch could be afforded by only the affluent but other networks like areeba and Tigo are now in the competition.

Another indispensable ICT facility that has seen dramatic evolution and patronage in the last couple of years in the Northern region is Internet Café. Not lest than 10 internet Cafes are found in Tamale but the least said about other districts the better, an issue that bothered participants at the workshop. Apart form Tamale metropolis, most districts in the Northern region could not access internet facility.

In a contribution, Osman Dawda, a journalist, brought to fore the case of Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo, a newly calved district in the Northern region. The area was not connected to the nation grid, no telephone network and the people suffer the hardly motorable road network. Anytime the residents need to make a local call, they either travel to the next district, some 36 miles away or cross to the nearest border town to neighbouring Togo, which is a mile away from the district and make their local calls via international network. The situation in this district epitomizes situations in some other districts in the region. In view of this, the participants therefore believed that to address poverty and its attendant social consequences there is the need for government to enhance the provision of social amenities in order to attract investors to places like the northern region which is endowed with so many investment potentials.

The Northern region Co-ordinator of GINKS, Mrs Sumayatu Kassim in her presentation on called on government to step up its commitment to addressing issues mitigating the development of women especially in ICT. She advocated much more sensitization for more women to get into ICT and added that it is the most effective way the country could salvage herself from abject poverty.