Fixing the Gender Digital Divide in Ghana
When I started using the internet a lot in 2001, I kept hearing about bridging the digital divide. The internet boom and dotcom bust had happened in the US, and for us in Ghana, we were struggling with access to the internet and having to deal with the few internet cafes at their expensive costs. A decade after, we had made a lot of ground with internet access and digital participation thanks to mobile phones. Thanks to my work around GhanaThink and my work at Google, I knew and worked well several digital champions in Africa, building web and mobile apps, etc. The next frontier we had to cross was the digital divide between men and women. A lot of strides have been made, but there is a lot more that can be done. In 2013, I was a Product and Project Manager at Rancard, a major tech company in Ghana that had multinational clients and served customers all over Africa. I worked with lots of engineers on recommendation, payment, communication and content management web and mobile apps. We ...