AfChix, a network of African women in technology, has secured renewed support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to continue a project using community networks and training to close the gender digital divide in Africa after winning the WomenConnect Challenge for the second time.

AfChix was one of nine winners in the first round of the WomenConnect Challenge, launched in 2018, ultimately creating four community networks by installing communication infrastructure in rural communities in Kenya, Namibia, Morocco and Senegal.

The project trains local women to maintain and manage the installed network infrastructure and to develop sustainable business plans to manage the way surrounding communities access Internet connectivity.

As one of the four third-round winners, AfChix will now 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 company says.

According to USAID, AfChix will integrate its online digital skills training into community network offerings and build partnerships with local universities, national research institutions and private-sector partners to increase the number of women who engage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics-based activities and livelihoods.

Further, the agency plans to actively work on shaping the policy and regulatory environments in the four countries to facilitate community networks as a best practice in championing digital inclusion.

The joint USAID–AfChix ‘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.

The USAID-funded WomenConnect Challenge is a global call for solutions to improve women’s participation in everyday life by meaningfully changing the way women access and use technology.

To date, USAID has 16 WomenConnect Challenge guarantees working to address the barriers limiting women’s access to technology and to connect nearly six-million women in 16 countries.

The first round in 2018 saw nine grants awarded to organisations that demonstrated how technology can create new opportunities for women’s empowerment in communities where they have faced restrictions to technology access and use.

The second round in 2019 resulted in three awarded grants to organisations that created specific solutions to address digital and economic opportunities.

The third round, announced in August 2020, granted four awards, matched with funding from the private sector, to advance women’s digital development.

“The four grants awarded in this round will focus on scaling proven strategies established by WomenConnect Challenge rounds one and two, such as addressing social norms, creating new ways for women to engage with technology and leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence to address barriers to access and use,” USAID highlights.

“USAID remains committed to closing the gender digital divide by supporting organisations like AfChix, [which] recognise that this will require more than just connecting communities to the Internet,” assures WomenConnect Challenge director Dr Revi Sterling.

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 widens to 31%.

“AfChix empowers women to take a leading role in how their community accesses the Internet. This helps to overcome perceptions that women cannot or should not use technology and also builds their self-confidence about using it

,” AfChix founder Dorcas Muthoni adds.