Africa

In her third column, Samukelisiwe Mabaso explores how groups and people, artists and performers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual are using the internet and social media to spread messages about love, diversity, and acceptance. This includes projects like Coalition for African Lesbians, Gaysi, Ahwaa and others.

Ghadeer Ahmed created Girl's Revolution on Twitter and Facebook a year after the revolution on Jan 25 2011 in Egypt. In this interview with Yara Sallam she traces the difficult and rewarding journey of talking about women's rights, body, sexuality, violence and harassment and sharing this with many other women and girls online.

This interview is part of a longer one that conducted in…

In this interview with Maggie Mapondera, she unpacks movement-building and the role of ICTs. Movements are built around shared stories and passions, and ICTs are one aspect of how momentum is built and sustained around a cause. Here Maggie Mapondera shows how women's stories are powerful and can potentially change the world, but we must listen with care and integrity.

In this column, Samukelisiwe explores how women in the global South have started using social media to make up for the lack of representation of black and brown women in mainstream media. Women of colour, people with disability, gender non conforming persons and others now use the internet to explore their image and their body, and form communities that celebrate different ways of being.

The coming of the digital age and of information technology promises that those 'left out' or excluded from development will be to access their rights and enjoy a higher standard of living. But what is the truth for African women - are the experiences of all 'marginal' women being lumped together and how far away is the promise of equal access and gender equity.

Judith Owigar speaks about her journey entering into tech spaces, and also about their work with Akirachix in Kenya helping other women along the same journey marked by trials, exclusions and success. While speaking about the barriers of education in science and technology (STEM), she says that what inspires her work in many forums around women in tech in Africa, is that eventually a woman should…

Addressing the internet gender divide in Africa can only be achieved through the deliberate creation of a feminist internet, and this was affirmed by the Gender and Internet Governance eXchange (gigX) workshop that was held on 10 October 2016 in Durban. We need a feminist internet that works to empower all of us in our diversities, creates equal power relations, and dismantles patriarchy in all…

When the TBTT campaign took off in Democratic Republic of Congo, there were few takers. Women rights' activists combatting VAW didn't understand the role ICTs could play in either propagating violence, or in activism. Now other Francophone countries approach SJS to learn more about the ways in which this cutting edge campaign is changing conversations around technology related VAW and reclaiming…

Shawna Finnegan and Emilar Vushe, who are the part of the Association for Progressive Communication's policy programme, engage in a conversation about their highlights of this year's Internet Governance Forum (IGF). They speak about the value of the IGF as well as barriers to access it, national and regional initiatives, and some of the biggest internet governance issues right now, such as…

I embarked on my journey to the second African School on Internet Governance with a few readings done and the Wikimedia definition of internet governance memorized. Eager to learn and to contribute the bit I’ve learned over the past few months, little did I know what awaited me.