1.3 - Data Response - Activity 2

"Women and information technology in Sub-Saharan Africa" is an eBook which describes the current state of ICT in Sub-Saharan Africa as-well as the situation involving, in particular, women.

A reason for the lack of ICT in this area is because of something such as telephones (and the shortage of them), Which is near enough the first thing you need if you want to connect to the internet, especially dial-up which is probably all they can afford. Furthermore, Africa is seriously lacking in fully ICT trained people so no-one can repair anything - let alone teach it. This is why people are not learning how to use it...because they're not being taught.

The project to develop ICT have been successful as it has not only trained people to use it, but it also has brought in a lot more computers which is steadily pushing Sub-Saharan Africa on the right side of the Digital Divide. However this (in some senses) has also failed because there are still a lot of untrained people. What's the point of having resources when you can't use them? Furthermore, the skills needed are not necessarily simple...by which i mean that it will take a lot more than simple skills to repair and program these machines.

One more problem is the lack of complex business skills because people can be hired with poor understanding of ICT, meaning bad decisions can be made and poorly designed systems are used which can create many problems, especially for people who have only just been trained to use it.