My dream had always been to contribute to create a just, equitable, and sustainable world in which every woman and girl child would posses the resources, opportunities, the right to be heard, the choices, and every other right to realize her full potential.
Greater than ever, global Internet connectivity has become such a critical tool to achieving this dream of upholding human rights for every woman particularly in my country Cameroon. Connectivity is the underpinning that would help make the voices and choices of women’s vision in communities in a country like ours possible. In an internet linked society, women and girls can make more informed decisions about their rights, health, access education opportunities, get new jobs, and learn about basic information and resources around them.
Because it's such a powerful device for the progress of women, the Internet should be accessible for every Cameroonian woman everywhere.
Take for instance, Cameroon has a total population of about 22.25 million with an estimated literacy rate at 71.3% (male) and 64.8 %(female), yet only an estimated 30% of women are online, meaning about 70% have never tweeted or "liked" anything, never emailed a photo or read the news online, never looked up facts or even created a public profile on linked in, or done any of the things others in the developed World do so often and so easily to move forward .
Also, there is a stark economic gap between the people who are connected and the people who are not. About 90% of women living in rural areas in the Country for example have never connected to the Internet, where it can be tough to afford basic devices and services, let alone the cost of accessing an internet network, the language used(where pidgin English is the common language understood by most people in rural communities), the limited or costly power sources and the prices involved in buying a computer or a phone.
This digital divide impacts women the most severely. In most communities around the South West region (where i come from) for example, women are connected at a rate of about 40% lower than men.Improved access could help these woman, but most especially it would help mothers who live in remote villages with no access to the internet or resources. For these mothers, access to the Internet may mean access to critical resources for improving health, safety, and economic opportunities for themselves, their families, and the entire communities. For example, a simple mobile phone would be used to document and report harassment and violence to the right institutions, to access training opportunities and access literacy programs to improve on agriculture, and could connect them to health workers such as midwives in the cities( for expectant women). In periods of poor whether conditions, a simple Internet connection would serve as a pathway for the rural women to start up or create a small businesses profile online and let her products reach new markets.
And that's just the start.Take for example the approach to increasing connectivity taken recently by Internet.org, an effort led by Facebook to provide a platform for people to access a set of free basic Internet services in areas like health, education, employment, news, and messaging, with the long-term goal of sustainable, global access to the Internet. Internet.org also includes services that significantly benefit women, such as maternal health information.
The point is, we have to do something. The challenge of connectivity and the challenge of achieving gender equality and sustainability of the global goals are closely related. Neither will be solved with a single stroke, but it's better to begin than to stand by and do nothing.
The International community, in cooperation with the private sector and the Cameroonian government, could create solutions that would bring as many women as much connectivity as possible.Then efforts like Internet.org can be a part of the solution. They've already given 9 million people in 15 countries access to a bundle of selected Internet services for free.
Now, of course, those 9 million people don't have access to everything on the Internet - and this is the idea that must be the goal of Cameroonians as well - but now they have something that they never had at all before. And I know with my deepest conviction and years of human rights experience, that once you give a woman new rights or new resources, she embraces them, she makes sure that her family benefits and she fights for more.
And if the benefits of internet connectivity are to extend to every Cameroonian Woman, the International community needs to work together with NGOs, the Cameroonian government, and the private sector to find a globally scalable and sustainable way to bring these women online. We need to recognize that none of us can do it alone, and none of us can do it all at once.
The Internet needs to belong to, and be shaped by, everyone, including every women in all the communities, not just those in the cities who can afford it now.
#GlobalGoals #Connectivity #Cameroon
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