Why is improving women's access to ICTs critical for agricultural development? What happens if we continue to ignore the usual gender gap and perpetuate it within the ICT4Ag field? What can stakeholders do to address the gender challenges in the use of ICTs, such as social expectations and roles, women's poor educational status, limited time and resources, among others? The session seeks to address capacity strengthening and stakeholder empowerment for improved engagement in ARD and in related policy processes. Issues to be discussed include: ICTs as enablers of communication, exchange of information & resources among the Value Chain actors; empowerment through ICTs for efficient/effective ARD activities; gender mainstreaming through ICTs for efficient/effective ARD activities; monitoring and assessing the impacts of ICTs for ARD projects/programmes. Other crosscutting issues of particular interest include what needs to be done in ICT for agriculture initiatives to take into consideration gender issues (access to, use and control of ICTs by both men and women). Expert perspectives and on-the-ground experiences from the World Bank, WOUGNET, FAO, AGRO-TIC-DEV, and Federation Nununa will be used to steer the discussion.
Profiling of WOUGNET's activities in this area in particular our focus on a gender perspective in our works. We shall be sharing our activities.
WOUGNET will also benefit from networking with like-minded organisations from all over the world - and exploring opportunities for new partnerships.