Pollicy’s digital ambassador program targets 1m upskilled women by 2040

Pollicy, a feminist technology collective based in Uganda will launch its Digital Ambassadors program in honour of the International Women’s Day celebration to break the bias and negative stereotypes that have promoted gender inequality on the continent and excluded women from fully benefiting from the advancement in technology.

The program plans to empower 1 million women with digital skills by 2040. Millions of women in countries like Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, and many others continue to lag behind in access to the internet.

The initiative is dedicated to bringing swift solutions to the problems and continued prevalence of the digital gender divide that disportionately affect young women across sub-saharan Africa and the larger African continent by fostering the absence of economic well-being on the continent.

And through the skilling and intentional inclusion of more young women in the digital space and giving these groups of women access to digital tools and more meaningful digital use, create swift impact by implementing initiatives that address the main facts that can close the digital gender divide -access, digital literacy and online safety.

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Neema Iyer, Founder and Managing Director at Pollicy is hoping that the Digital Ambassadors Program will promote initiatives and projects that will tackle the great societal challenges and biases such as harmful societal norms and inequitable access to education that have encouraged the marginalization and exclusion of women in participating and benefiting from the growing digital ecosystem in Africa.

In alignment with the theme of International women’s Day 2022, ‘Break the Bias’, the digital ambassadors program will be launched with virtual round table discussions in partnership with private sector, government, public sector, civil society and other foundations from Uganda, Tanzania and Nigeria.

Pollicy is an East-African feminist civic technology collective, whose work and research spans across the use and implementation of data and technology to engineer social change. In the recent past, it has researched ways through which Africans can take back control of their data and reimagine new ways of tech ownership.

Phillip Ayazika, Programs Manager at Pollicy stated that the program launch will not only mark the five year milestone of Pollicy’s impact across East Africa but also usher its further contributions to causes that are prevalent in all regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly problems associated with limited digital access, literacy and online safety from women in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The digital ambassadors program will launch virtually on the 3rd of March, 2022 in Tanzania and Uganda and this will be followed by the Nigerian & South African launch in the third-quarter of the year 2022.