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In 2018 AfChix won a grant from USAID under the WomenConnect Challenge (WCC) to create entrepreneurial opportunities for rural women in Senegal, Morocco, Kenya, and Namibia to facilitate local Internet Services and work as network engineers.

The AfChix initiative contributes to improving connectivity and building the capacities of communities to establish and maintain telecommunications infrastructure.

The entrepreneurial and empowerment program helps women establish their own companies, provides important community services, and positions the women as role models.

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In the year 1998, I joined the University of Nairobi as a freshman. In our computer labs, we had Internet access. At the time, no other university in Kenya provided Internet access to students. The Internet first became available in Kenya during 1993. Full Internet access was established in 1995. Interestingly, African Regional Centre for Computing (ARCC) an NGO, led the initiative to bring the Internet into Kenya. The most notable people involved in this project were scholar Dr. Shem Ochuodho and a scientist American, Randy Bush. It is interesting that the Internet was brought to Kenya not by today’s thriving commercial telecommunication players nor by the government. The two, however, now dominate and dictate how the masses can access the Internet through commercial Internet service provision and respective regulation. 

Indeed, the people who started the Internet never saw this dominance by commercial players coming. These businesses have built their business models around the Internet, and today determine and control how users benefit, and how much it costs consumers to get the benefits of the Internet. These players have definitely played a significant role in extending the use of the Internet but they have also limited the universal access of the Internet in many ways. Those born in 1998 are now twenty-two years old. I have a few on my team. They do not know much about the history of the Internet in Africa as it is not a widely discussed topic. Our African Internet pioneers were involved in big fights with governments to land the first Internet data packets on this continent. Internet Service Providers were non-existent. When this happened many were happy, new information and communication technology policies cum laws were enacted and licensing regimes were established. We have been playing in this policy environment and legal framework. The telcos and ISPS have managed to create an infrastructure that has seen the spread of the Internet to a great extent. What appears to me and you and wide mobile Internet penetration in Africa is a mere 24% as per the GSMA Mobile Internet Connectivity 2019 Sub-Saharan Africa Factsheet.  Internet World Stats reports a 39.3% penetration rate though for Africa and 87.2 % for Kenya. 

It is easy to get fooled by these percentages but the fact is that the Internet is not affordable. And this is because Internet provision is in the hands of commercial entities who see it mainly as a commercial venture. Mobile data will never deliver universal affordable Internet access. This is a fact that governments need to wake up to. This is a hard fact for the African continent where Internet access is predominantly via mobile data. Users should not be visiting the Internet, they should stay online to truly derive the benefits of what the Internet is today. This is untenable with current mobile data tariffs. Most of African homes and businesses do not have access to fixed broadband through fiber or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL). Looking at the income patterns of individuals and small businesses, most must go to work every day to get income to cover daily amenities and this includes money to buy Internet bundles. This explains why in Kenya for example you can find even hourly Internet bundles or subscription tariffs. We call it the “kadogo” economy.

When countries started taking measures to control the spread of COVID-19 early this month, schools were closed. This was closely followed by a recommendation for people to stay home. It became apparent that most African countries were totally unprepared for disruption in face-to-face school education. Parents too are unprepared for working from home whether in employment or business. The main reason for this is that we have not done enough investment to ensure the Internet is universally accessible and affordable. There are few homes today that do not have constant access to drinking water and this should be the case for Internet access going into the future. The current Internet access dynamics make it similar to families depending exclusively on bottled water for their household needs instead of clean tap water. The Internet should be a public utility service. The governments must begin looking to it as such. They must treat access to the Internet as they do to water, electricity, roads, and sewerage. COVID-19 has caught us all unprepared and we do not know for how long, for example, the education calendars will be disrupted. What we know is that if each family regardless of economic status had the ability to stay online for all productive work needed by each family member daily, it is possible to continue school programs at this point and even have telemedicine. The internet infrastructure would support many areas of our lives. Being on the Internet is no longer a luxury or a preserve for well-to-do people, it is a great necessity. If mobile data continues to be the main way to get connected, the government must step in and ensure that it is universally accessible and affordable.

Since 2018, our non-profit organization AfChix had been implementing community wireless network projects in Kenya, Morocco, Senegal and Namibia. This project is funded under the USAID WomenConnect Challenge. The project named “gender-sensitive approach to connect the unconnected using Community Network Models” involves working with unconnected communities to build their capacities to establish and maintain community-based and owned telecommunications infrastructure. Our projects in the four countries have involved putting grassroots women at the forefront of steering a technical project at the community level as they have done for other community initiatives such as access to water and electricity. It has been a great learning experience for our teams. Everyone wants an affordable and accessible Internet in their homes. Women in the grassroots want to take up courses without leaving their homes, keep in touch with their families via video calls, cook by following a recipe online, tell a story online, market a local product, search about anything they like or pursue other passions through the information available online. These women represent their family members who too want to derive the same benefits from the Internet. The biggest barrier is “mobile data bundles are too expensive”. 

COVID-19 will change the world forever. One inevitable change will be moving to a virtual world. Engaging online will be a big new norm. Education and health care will in the future have a big online component. The time is now for governments to declare the Internet a public utility service and begin to invest in its universal and affordable access. For governments to achieve this, they must involve the community and define new regulatory frameworks.

Author: @DorcasMuthoni Founder, AfChix

Our proposed solution entails working with unconnected communities to build their capacities to establish and maintain community-based and owned telecommunications infrastructure. Most of African homes and businesses do not have access to fixed broadband through fiber or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL). Looking at the income patterns of individuals and small-scale businesses, most get to work every day to get income to cover daily amenities this includes money to buy Internet bundles which is relatively expensive giving a clear explanation of Kenya’s “kadogo economy” where you find hourly Internet bundles or subscription tariff.

The project is about the human capacity building related to women and Community Networks. The solution used gender sensitive approaches and deliberately involve women as leaders and vocal persons in the design, installation and maintenance of Lanet Umoja Community Networks. We build the technical, policy, and leadership capacities of women in establishing and managing these Community Networks.

With the help of our able sponsors USAID, KENET on early 2019 we collaborated with Chief Francis Kariuki of Lanet Umoja Community in Nakuru North District, our goal was to mobilize local women community leaders in Lanet Umoja to implement a local wireless community network for public utility and service at an affordable rate. Chief Francis Kariuki is successfully using social media to mobilize over 400 women community leaders. Lanet Umoja has 30,000 people living in about 7,500 households.

Afchix mission being to create an exemplary organization and network of African Women in Computing with a desire to inclusively provide: opportunities, mentor ship, capacity building and inspire young generations through role modeling .A manageable group of ladies was picked up by the project coordinator and Afchix founder, youths from various universities to help with steering of the project and mentorship of other ladies in the community so as to make the project a successful to foster Afchix’s mission, vision, motto and core values to reality.

The project commenced by understanding the view of the community on community network, their expectation, their contribution and more so ever how it will be of benefit to them (economically, socially, spiritually) especially the women in the community mainly in their day to day activities.

With steering group majorly based in Nairobi, the project activities were scheduled based on our availability, the general project was broken down to manageable tasks keeping factors of project timing, cost and quality on check. In Feb 2019, the first project task was dealt on, several site surveys were undertaken by the team to survey the area and check-up of the already established network infrastructure (the service providers, cabling around amenities) so as to see the accountability with the incoming new network, the site survey aimed on checking of any network barriers (line of site) within the network zone in terms of bandwidth delay i.e.- the terrain layout, Nakuru county being at the lane of the great rift valley the factor was of great concern, but it was well dealt on by the engineers on the ground, servers and access points zones was also picked up keeping, factors of network equipment,   and general functionality of the network at hand, the activities was made possible by the support of network engineers from KENET, the area Champion who is the chief, the Project coordinator and the Afchix mentees teams . The activity took at least two days’ time. Unemployment rate becoming rampant especially among the youth in African countries; Kenya being one of them Lanet Umoja on the map. The youths from the area shared the views on the economic use of the community network and it was quite impressive since many great innovative ideas could now be natured, and many youths problems be solved I.e. online writing, online marketing and selling of the locally produced products like ornaments, farm products and taking of short online courses to boost their academic career since a number of the youths are from tertiary institutions level. Several hands on training practices was carried out in the area on basic network functionality, basic network devices and their functionality, cabling and general network connectivity and maintenance with a desired numbers of youths volunteering on the process . The youths were also encouraged to enroll on several certified free online courses offered by the internet society (ISOC) which was introduced to them by Lanet Umoja project coordinator to mentor them and keep them engaged during the period and for future benefit.  Many locally mobilized community clubs played a major role in mentorship also by showcasing hidden talents and carrying out some follow up programs.

The next task was network engineering processes which took a good number of project time, the main network hotspot(transmitters and receivers) in various schools in the area and the server zones was constructed by setting up the transmitter mast at Lanet secondary, Bishop Edward and Murunyu high school-,clearing the already available offered server room and setting up connection and device installations(EnGenius radios, EnGenius Access Point, power UPS and switches). All tasks were being done by the project coordinator, Afchix mentees team and the sites engineers from Kenya educational networks (KENET) who are the main ISP (Internet service provider) for the community  the network is drawn from the neighboring university offering a network speed of 50mbps with a service level of up to 0.099%.A second transmitter mast was setup at the local school, Bishop Edwards Donovan Secondary since it is at a higher level compared to other social amenities this will the hot spot zone in the area available schools to be connected are Nakuru East Primary school, Lanet primary school, Lanet Umoja primary school, Kamurunyu primary school and Murunyu secondary school, chiefs office among other many social amenities. After the general network distribution and sharing, testing was also done in the processes to entertain speed, connectivity and accessibly to the last mile be for officially provisioning of the internet to the local community which is still an ongoing activity monitored by KENET. Maintenance and monitoring of the network services is done by the area youths.

Internet being a service it must have rules and guidance based on consumption and usage to maintain the service level and meets its goals for better optimization and functionality. To achieve this a billing system service was introduced by Afchix, this was a custom made software called Ironwifi for the implementation processes the system was well explained by the core billing team to the network leading management team on how the system function, the billing rates  are Ksh 200, Ksh 50 and Ksh 10 the charges rate depending on the client. Out of the charges the income collected will be saved on community saving account which will be managed by the designate authorities for network maintenance and general community projects boost up depending on the community buying rates. The network (Wi-Fi) is aimed at benefiting the community in general so the rates are set up at a standard affordable fee rate keeping the factor of reliability, availability and functionality at a constant.

The next network phase is distribution of the network service (Wi-Fi) to the last mile which is still an ongoing process to make each and every household around Lanet Umoja region able to access this internet service depending on their income level so as to make everyone a beneficiary either directly or indirectly. This can be achieved by the ongoing cooperation, hospitality and willingness of Lanet Umoja community being led by the “tweeting” area chief whose mission is to make Lanet Umoja a network hotspot zone by 2030.

By Vymala Thuron

African economies are making bold moves to speed up digitalisation and transformation. We want women to play a key part in that. In a new partnership agreement, we are committing to closing the digital gender gap and helping women embrace technology to drive change.

Africa’s growing Internet economy has the potential to contribute nearly $180 billion to the continent’s economy by 2025. According to global consultancy Accenture, the Internet economy is set to make up 5.2% of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by that year, compared to 4.5% in 2020.

With a boom in e-commerce during the coronavirus pandemic, there is new hope that digitalisation can drive transformation and growth. But without deliberate and coordinated efforts to address a substantial digital gender divide, African women could be locked out of participating in this growth. 

Digital gender divide according to UN Women refers to “gender differences in resources and capabilities to access and effectively utilise ICTs within and between countries, regions, sectors and socioeconomic groups”. The 2020 GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report found that  393 million women  do not have a mobile phone, among which 74 million in sub-Saharan Africa. 

That is why AfChix and the Internet Society renewed their partnership agreement in April this year. In the agreement, they commit to continue supporting African girls and women to access and use the Internet and its resources to support digital transformation, connect the unconnected, and drive growth in their countries.

“It is now more important than ever before to turn the vicious cycle of gender inequality and a lack of access to digital skills and technology among women into a virtuous one. If we don’t, African women will be increasingly excluded from participating in the rapidly digitising global economy, ” says Dorcas Muthoni, Founder of Afchix. 

The organizations want to work together to mobilize African women to address Internet challenges and build communities of empowered internet users. “Simply ensuring that more women can gain access to the Internet is critical, but not enough. Women also need to be empowered with the necessary knowledge and skills to truly use this access to benefit themselves and their communities,” adds Muthoni. 

“We believe in an open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy Internet for everyone. It is therefore critical for us that women not only have access to the Internet but also be part of the effort to make it bigger and stronger. We believe that by working with AfCHIX, we will have the opportunity to bring more women at the heart of the development of the Internet in Africa,” says Dawit Bekele, Regional Vice President, Africa, Internet Society

ISOC and AfChix already share a long history of collaboration in Africa. At the 3rd Summit on Community Networks in Africa, ISOC collaborated with AfCHIX to host the session, Promoting Gender Inclusion for Community Networks in Africa. AfCHIX also worked with ISOC chapters to foster women inclusion and access to the internet. This has included projects to provide training to women engineers in Gambia and to provide computers and Internet connectivity to deaf students in Uganda. 

“Through granting women access to the internet, equipping them with basic digital skills and inspiring them to pursue careers in the ICT sector we empower African women to tackle and overcome African challenges. The potential positive impact this can make on the social and economic development of the content is immense,” concludes Muthoni.

About  Internet Society

Founded in 1992 by Internet pioneers, the Internet Society (ISOC) is a global non-profit organization working to ensure the Internet remains a force for good for everyone. Through its community of members, special interest groups, and 130+ chapters around the world, the organization defends and promotes Internet policies, standards, and protocols that keep the Internet open, globally-connected, and secure. For more information, please visit: www.internetsociety.org

#womendigitaldivide #womenintech

By Mari Blumenthal & Vymala Thuron

AfChix chosen as a winner of the #WomenConnectChallenge to continue a project using community networks and training  to close the digital gender divide in Africa

AfChix is enabling women in rural Kenya, Senegal, Namibia, and Morocco to take the lead in connecting their communities to the internet for the first time. AfChix is one of the winners in the third round of the WomenConnect Challenge, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). WomenConnect is a global call for solutions to improve women’s participation in everyday life by meaningfully changing the ways women access and use technology.

As a winner in the first round of the WommenConnect Challenge, launched in 2018, AfChix has already built four community networks by installing communications infrastructure in rural areas. AfChix trains local women to technically maintain the installed network infrastructure and to develop sustainable business plans to manage the way surrounding communities access the internet connectivity now available to them. This includes providing women with digital literacy and other training to empower them to use technology and the internet to improve their lives and build small businesses. 

To date, USAID has 16 WomenConnect Challenge grantees working to address barriers limiting women’s access to technology and to connect nearly 6 million women in 16 countries. In the current round of the project, AfChix plans to extend the reach of its four existing networks to connect more schools and households, while also offering digital literacy training to more women in these communities and across Africa. 

AfChix hopes that through building the technical, policy, and leadership capacities of women in establishing and managing local internet service providers and creating a safe space for women and girls to interact with technology, it can contribute to closing the immense gender digital divide still present in Africa. The gender digital divide reflects (GDD) inequalities in digital connection due to gender. Globally, the proportion of women using the internet is 12% lower than the proportion of men and in the least developed countries in Africa, this gap broadens to 31%. 

Dr Revi Sterling, Director of the WomenConnect Challenge, says USAID remains committed to closing the gender digital divide by supporting organisations like AfChix, who recognise that this will require more than just connecting communities to the internet. “AfChix empowers women to take a leading role in how their community accesses the internet. This helps to overcome perceptions that women can’t or shouldn’t use technology and also builds their self-confidence about using it. The training these women receive shows them how to use technology to their benefit by accessing economic opportunities, including as entrepreneurs.”

Dorcas Muthoni, founder of AfChix, says closing the gender digital divide is becoming increasingly important to the social and economic empowerment of African women. “Digital technology is a key driver of economic empowerment, especially today. African women, who tend to rely on informal employment opportunities, have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This should serve as a wake up call  that closing the digital divide is critical. Building digital skills for women and girls can help them to take advantage of the opportunities created in the new digital era arising from the pandemic.”

Muthoni says that by joining efforts with USAID to increase women’s access to and use of technology, AfChix hopes to support many girls and working-age women to be changemakers. “This joint USAID and AfChix’s ‘Scaling up Women-Led Community Networks for Women’s Prosperity’ project will help to enable women to fully participate in their economies by equipping them with the skills needed to enter an increasingly digital labour market or to become entrepreneurs. We know that women tend to invest the gains of their success back into their families and communities and have the potential to make an even more significant contribution to development and prosperity. We hope to use Women-Led Community Networks  to amplify this impact,” she concludes.

by Vymala Thuron and Mari Blumenthal

The next phase of a project previously championed by Lanet-Umoja’s well-known “Tweeting Chief, the late Francis Kariuki, will soon see this rural community connecting an increasing number of paying subscribers to the internet through a network managed from within its own ranks.   

As one of the winners in the third round of the WomenConnect Challenge, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), AfChix is expanding the community network it has previously established in Lanet-Umoja. WomenConnect is a global call for solutions to improve women’s participation in everyday life by meaningfully changing the ways women access and use technology. 

As a winner in the first round of the Challenge in 2018, AfChix reached out to Chief Kariuki, by then well-known for using Twitter to communicate with his community on especially safety matters, to gain local support to install communications infrastructure in Lanet-Umoja. The project has since connected seven schools in the area to the internet, trained women leaders on using the internet for business, and offered vital training to the community to maintain the network and develop a sustainable business model to manage it.

Irene Misoi, the Project Coordinator, says the project aims to connect underserved communities in Kenya to the internet through a model that is sustainable over the long term. “We developed a billing system using Mpesa to allow subscribers to sign up to the network and pay for connectivity to ensure that the community can generate to pay for bandwidth and equipment and to maintain and expand the network. Over the next 18 months, we plan to help the  trained community leaders to expand the subscriber base to over 1000, as well as to set up an ICT centre to serve Lanet-Umoja and neighbouring communities.”

Misoi says the COVID-19 pandemic has also made the need to close the digital gender divide, which refers to the global phenomenon that women are less likely than men to be able to access and use digital technology, even more urgent. A World Bank survey among firms in 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa showed that 22% of respondents either started or increased their use of digital platforms, social media, and the internet in response to the pandemic.

“As a result, African women could increasingly be left out from accessing education, financial services, work opportunities and information that could enhance their lives. This project hopes to help to address this by providing women with digital skills and the opportunity to interact with technology in a safe space, enabling them to benefit from the services and economic opportunities of this new digital era, ” she concludes.