Document(s) 11 of 13

This new paradigm and the new order have been accompanied by some obviously negative processes: inflation, economic marginalization of subgroups, and increased poverty. However, the emerging revolutions, including increased democratization, economic liberalization, and competitive politics, are also providing windows of opportunities, which are in turn shaping people’s needs. This has also brought existing gaps into sharper focus, particularly gaps in existing civic knowledge and in the skills needed to use information and communication technologies (ICTs). These gaps are setting a new agenda for development work.

In Kenya, the lack of civic knowledge, which is worsened by a lack of skills and access to ICTs, has resulted in voter apathy and the failure of the Kenyan people to participate effectively in the electoral process and governance. Kenya held its first multiparty election, under colonial supervision, in 1963. The seventh general election, in 1992, was the first multiparty election held in the independent Republic of Kenya. Following this election, numerous allegations were made concerning election anomalies and malpractices, such as violations of election laws and bribery, which undermined the principle of free and fair elections and ultimately those of efficient management practices, such as good governance, transparency, and accountability. The 1997 election was thus organized amid country-wide demands for a level playing field and minimum constitutional reforms.

The situation for women is particularly grave and justifies the establishment of community-based information and documentation centres. Women constitute the majority in Kenya’s population and play a pivotal role in the economy. Most live in rural areas, where they form the backbone of the small-scale sector. Many households depend on women’s incomes. Women, therefore, contribute significantly to Kenya’s gross domestic product, its employment generation, and its supply of foreign revenue. Women also produce and maintain the country’s labour force.

Despite the numeric advantage of Kenyan women and their significant contribution to the economy, they fail to have access to key development resources and are consequently poor. Although Kenya has a development-policy commitment to balancing access to development resources for women and men, this has not translated into reality. Despite government policy pronouncements, the difference between women’s and men’s access to development resources is intensifying, with levels for men closer to the targets than those for women.

Table 1 shows the gender-based disparities in all policy areas. In 1996, 64% of trained secondary-school teachers were men. Most of the untrained teachers were also men (77%). Women’s representation in modern-sector employment only rose from 12% in 1964 to 21% in 1990. The same pattern appears for gender representation in the civil service and the media. In 1989, women made up only 22% of extension workers; by 1994, this proportion had dropped to 20%. Men also dominated in teaching at training colleges (data not shown). Gender disparities also appeared in the legal sector in 1994: only 23% of the high-court judges and magistrates were women. Most of the Members of Parliament (MPs) and representatives in the local authorities were men. In 1969, women constituted only 7% of the MPs; after the 1997 general election, the proportion that was female dropped even further, to 3%. The number of women in civic positions increased after the 1997 elections, but men still held 86% of these positions.
 
 
 

Such gender-based disparities are unjustified in a country where women form the majority of voters. Women’s lack of involvement in professional and political life in Kenya is perpetuated because few women are aware of their civic, social, and economic rights. Because of their lack of civic awareness and their poverty, women are convenient targets for those who try to buy their votes during political campaigns. Women are also ill-equipped to perceive the connection between their choice of leaders and the resulting social and economic policies affecting their lives.

In this chapter, I describe the Women and Governance project in Kakamega and Makueni districts of Kenya and assess the role of ICTs in this project. I show that community-based resource centres, equipped with ICTs, can

• Play a key role in informing Kenyans, especially women, of critical issues in the electoral process;

• Enhance women’s interaction;

• Be used for generating, storing, and exchanging strategic information; and thus

• Enable women to make informed decisions and participate effectively in the electoral process.

The information in this chapter was obtained from primary and secondary sources and consultative meetings. A needs assessment was conducted among women in Kakamega and Makueni to generate primary data. A stakeholders conference provided additional information. The conference brought together women from Kakamega and Makueni; a number of ICT service providers; representatives of government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and development experts in the fields of ICTs, civic knowledge, women in development, and information, education, and communication (IEC). The chapter also draws on information from a curriculum- and materials-development workshop, which brought together women from Kakamega and Makueni and specialists in materials development, civic knowledge, and ICTs.
 
 

Pitfalls in the evolution of civic knowledge in Kenya

Following the reintroduction of a multiparty system in Kenya, in 1992, civic education emerged as an issue of interest to the Wananchi (a common term used in Kenya to refer to the ordinary people), particularly the women. Women in Kenya, more than any other group, emerged as strong and organized. They demanded a voice; they demanded a mainstream position for their interests on the new political agenda; and they demanded equal participation with men in the democratization process.

A flurry of activities revolved around the sensitization of leaders to gender-based issues. Workshops were organized to discuss strategies for mainstreaming the issues affecting women. The objective was to have more women in decision-making positions. The ultimate goals were to improve the citizens’ knowledge of their democratic rights and responsibilities, enhance their understanding of the impacts of the social and political situation in the country on their lives, and enable them to manage their own governance process.

One of the main constraints on women’s participation in the democratization process was found to be a lack of civic awareness. At that time, no one had begun to generate, design, or package civic information to enhance women’s full political, economic, and social participation. The research established that appropriate civic information would give women greater confidence to seek leadership positions at both local and national levels. Civic activities focused on educating women on their civil and political rights and creating a pool of leaders with civic knowledge, particularly in the areas of women’s empowerment, democracy and governance, and gender.

The strategy was to increase women’s participation in all spheres of development, especially leadership and decision-making. In 1992, 18 women vied for parliamentary seats, and 6 were elected. The strategy had limited impact. This situation persists today: women’s representation in politics and decision-making is still low. Women have failed to translate their numeric strength into political power, and this is attributable to structural imbalances in Kenyan society that discriminate against women and make their search for leadership difficult. Cultural stereotyping of women in general and of female leaders in particular is negative and buttresses and perpetuates inequality, even in areas where laws have been passed to prevent this. Gender inequality continues in Kenya, even as we approach the new millennium. If we are to change the tide, the challenge will be to change the laws, the electoral system, the economic structures, and the ways women view themselves and are viewed by men. The struggle for both de facto and de jure equality is not feminist chauvinism but an integral part of women’s human rights.

The strategy adopted at the dawn of competitive politics in Kenya, in 1992, was to train community educators and leaders so they would themselves be knowledgeable and skilled trainers. This was a feasible strategy to create a better informed community and increase the participation of women in governance. However, it was too narrowly focused on governance and civic issues in electoral politics and left out development conditions of ordinary life.

Following the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria, women’s rights began to be defined as “human rights.” This became the clarion call. Meetings and civic training stressed that economic, social, and cultural rights are interrelated with, and inseparable from, civil and political rights. Civic training was expanded and focused on creating awareness in the following areas:

• Gender and equity issues;

• Legal issues (particularly those pertaining to women);

• Voter education;

• Human rights (women’s rights);

• Responsible citizenship; and

• Reproductive health.

Spontaneous responses to sensational, often short-lived issues have characterized the evolution of civic education in Kenya. The responses have been emotional and reactionary. Civic education has therefore not been consistent or harmonious. It has not been directed to persistent issues. It has not established a program with a system of relevant, cumulative knowledge, experiences, methodologies, and solutions. Activists have made numerous haphazard, often contradictory resolutions and formulated action plans to carry forward the spirit of empowerment. But this is worsened by the restrictive environments created by government, which, at best, has withheld its support for civic education and, at worst, interfered in it. This mood persists. Despite a legal amendment to allow the Electoral Commission to carry out voter education, the government refuses to allot sufficient funds for this activity, ostensibly because it is not a national priority.

The Women and Governance project has set itself the task of finding answers to the many questions that remain unanswered: How is it possible to be certain about the state of civic knowledge in Kenya, given the diversity of experience? What has been done with this information? How has this information been stored? What retrieval mechanisms have been established? How is the information disseminated? What are the information gaps? What possibilities and challenges would be faced in any attempt to fill such information gaps? What areas of capacity-building are required to ensure more effective civic education? What has been the impact of the activities directed to civic education and knowledge (involving many donors, NGOs, churches, community-based organizations, and people)? Have educators empowered women to generate, store, access, use, and manage their own information? Whose needs has civic information responded to?
 
 

The Women and Governance project

Target areas

The Family Support Institute (FASI), an NGO, has been implementing the Women and Governance project in Central Isukha, which is in Kakamega District, in Western Province; and in Nguumo, which is in Makueni District, in Eastern Province.

Central Isukha

Central Isukha has six sections: Virhembe, Mukulusu, Shagungu, Shinyalu, Shiswa, and Kakamega forest. These cover an area of 620 km² and have a total population of 42126, giving an average density of 679 people/km².

Central Isukha is traversed by one main murram road (a terraced earth road), from Khayega market to Kakamega town. Some parts of Central Isukha have access to electricity through the government-funded Rural Electrification Programme: the environments along the main road, the District Officers’ Centre, Shibuye Girls Secondary School, and Lirhanda Girls Secondary School. Parts of Central Isukha also have access to piped water, owing to the Integrated Rural Water System of the Ministry of Water Development, the efforts of NGOs, and bilateral water programs.

Central Isukha has a post office and some telephone facilities and other communication services supplied through the post office. However, it has no community-based resource centre and therefore lacks the related services, such as libraries and networking facilities.

Ongoing activities in this locality include those of women’s groups, mainly supported by the Ministry of Culture and Social Services (MCSS), bilateral or multilateral donors, and nongovernmental agencies. These activities include civic training conducted by community-based civic educators and coordinated by the Catholic Justice for Peace Commission. The Family Planning Association of Kenya (FPAK) provides education for women’s groups, using folk media and drama. FPAK also uses puppet shows to train women in family planning and AIDS awareness and prevention. MCSS supports women’s activities in the areas of farming methods (to increase crop yields), estate management (house building and renting), a handicrafts industry, revolving loan funds, social welfare, and adult literacy. In addition, the line ministries, NGOs, and community members implement sectoral activities. But the donor and NGO presence is more limited in Central Isukha than in other parts of Kenya.

Nguumo

Nguumo covers an area of 3 410 km² and has a total population of 151 310, giving an average density of 44 people/km².

Nguumo is on the Nairobi–Mombasa road and has access to electricity through the government-funded Rural Electrification Programme. Water is available through the Integrated Rural Water System of the Ministry of Water Development, the efforts of NGOs, and bilateral programs.

Nguumo has a community-based resource centre, established by the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries. The resource centre, which serves 12 villages and focuses on community-based health information systems (HIS), was the output of an applied research project on health information and primary health care. It used a geographic information system to develop an intersectoral database for subdistrict-level planning and management. Various HIS components were tested by the Integrated District Diagnosis project, which was implemented in the former greater Kibwezi division between 1989 and 1992. The communities run the project with the help of AMREF and in close collaboration with the government. The project trains local community members, who generate survey and qualitative information and prepare and produce manuals on the use and development of community-based health information in rural areas and on health-care management. Eco News Africa, with funding from IDRC, and other donors will establish a community-based high-frequency and FM radio station for exchange of information and experiences among community members in Kibwezi and two other communities in Tanzania and Uganda.

FASI’s Women and Governance project is building on these initiatives. Its Civic Education project is also expected to act as a catalyst for activities of other NGOs and government departments. The government has stepped up efforts to raise the status of women through general awareness, civic education, and the participation of women’s groups in promoting equal rights and women at all levels.

Target population and communities

Rural women’s group members and their leaders in the communities in the two localities make up the target population for the project. Kenya has more than 30 000 women’s groups with memberships totaling more than 1 million. Central Isukha has 1 000 women’s groups, with 30 000 members altogether. The catchment area for the Central Isukha project has 500 women’s groups, with a total membership of 15 000. In Nguumo, the project targets another 500 women’s groups, also with a total membership of about 15 000.

Until recently, women’s civic participation was mainly restricted to electoral politics. Even within the electoral process, women are seriously manipulated through bribery, violence, and intimidation, owing to their illiteracy, civic ignorance, poverty, and cultural marginalization. The introduction of multiparty politics has provided the opportunity to enhance women’s civic knowledge and increase their participation in governance (broadly defined to include electoral politics and development conditions of ordinary life).

Objectives

The general objective of the Women and Governance project is to build on the existing infrastructure in community-based resource centres so that the women in the two rural localities (Central Isukha and Nguumo) will be able to access, generate, and use civic information to enhance their participation in governance. The specific objectives of the project are to

• Increase women’s awareness of their civic rights and responsibilities;

• Increase the pool of informed women who can participate in the electoral process as candidates and voters;

• Increase women’s representation in decision-making positions in the public and private sectors;

• Increase community members’ control of the electoral process and promote the principles of free and fair elections;

• Create awareness of the virtues of accountability, transparency, and good governance;

• Increase women’s access to ICTs and their ability to use them for their own daily needs and thereby improve their capacity for development-related decision-making;

• Increase the opportunities for communities to update their information on governance; and

• Increase the opportunities for communities to use ICTs to upgrade their traditional information systems and networks.

Activities

Several activities will be implemented under this project:

• Undertaking a needs assessment in the target districts to determine the status of civic-information resources and ICTs;

• Convening a consultative meeting for stakeholders to review and share information on existing civic materials and ICT resources, to assess their adequacy, to identify gaps, and to develop an action plan;

• Generating additional civic-education materials, securing ICTs, and establishing a training program to respond to identified needs;

• Establishing resource centres in the project areas, equipped with comprehensive civic-education materials, ICTs, and training programs;

• Recruiting resource people skilled in ICTs, managers skilled in management of community-resource centres, and women’s group leaders from communities in the target areas to participate in the project;

• Facilitating the resource people’s training of two resource-centre managers and volunteer trainers (women’s group leaders) in the management and use of community-based information centres and ICTs;

• Facilitating the resource-centre managers’ and volunteer trainers’ training of women’s group members from the local communities in civic education and the management and use of community-based information centres and ICTs; and

• Conducting exchange tours between the women from the two project areas so that they can share information and viewpoints.

Women’s common conditions and issues in Kakamega and Makueni

For women in Kakamega and Makueni, governance is still an ideal that they are striving to achieve. The women experience common problems related to socioeconomic and cultural governance and to political governance.

Socioeconomic and cultural governance

The women in the two project areas experience similar conditions: deprivation, exploitation, exclusion, and poverty. A needs assessment conducted among women in Kakamega and Makueni showed that socioeconomic and cultural governance (defined as access to and control of resources, improved social status, and participation in economic decision-making to ensure equity) remains elusive (Table 2).
 

More than one-half of the women in the project had only primary education; less than one-fifth had secondary education; and nearly one-third had never been to school. This reflects high levels of nonenrollment and school dropout among girls. They are not of the favoured gender and are not supported or targeted for skills development. This was further confirmed in the observation that more than one-third of the women in Kakamega and Makueni are unable to read or write in any language.

Access to water in Kakamega and Makueni is a problem. In Kakamega, water sources are near and can be easily accessed by women; however, the water sources are unprotected and often contaminated, resulting in waterborne sicknesses. Managing the health care of the household members creates more work for the already overburdened women.

The water problems in Makueni relate to the long distances women have to travel for water, which leaves them with little time for other welfare activities. This adversely affects the girls’ performance at school. Long distances to water sources also explain why water is a scarce resource. Rationing water within households undermines personal and household hygiene and renders household members vulnerable to disease. Furthermore, women have to perform in multiple roles, as collectors of water and firewood and providers of health care, and have little community support. Having these multiple roles undermines their ability to meet their other responsibilities, especially child care.

Most women in Kakamega and Makueni are engaged in unpaid family labour, mainly farming, which is unreliable because it depends on weather conditions. Most women also engage in their farming activities without owning any land. Men, mainly husbands and fathers-in-law, are the legal owners of the land the women live on and farm. Consequently, women grow crops and keep animals on this land but do not make decisions regarding the sale of crops or animals. In both districts, women only make decisions regarding the sale of animal products, such as milk, eggs, and hides. Women in the two districts are also vulnerable because they depend on their husbands’ salaries and therefore their livelihoods and welfare are pegged on someone else’s decisions — the husband could choose to leave his job, or he could genuinely lose it. Some women engage in trading activities, selling groceries, vegetables, cereals, animals, second-hand clothes, household goods, and fruits. These businesses are controlled by the women themselves; this reflects their potential to control their own income-generating resources. However, female farmers and traders have poor markets. Most women sell their goods in the local markets. Distributors’ exploitation of rural producers is a particularly serious problem in Makueni. Women also expressed concern about having goods to sell but no access to markets.

Political governance

Political governance encompasses the decision-making and policy implementation of a legitimate and authoritative state, which represents the interests of society and allows citizens to freely elect their representatives. Women in Kakamega and Makueni have yet to achieve this.

These women nevertheless know the qualities of a good leader. A good leader, for these women, would be presentable, courageous, honest, sociable, a good example to others, God-fearing, patient and fair and would initiate development and mobilize community members. The women in each of the project districts identified the same qualities, differing only in their ranking of these. Additional qualities included being patient, cooperative, creative, self-respecting, and educated, having stable families, owning some property, and being knowledgeable (Table 3).
 
 

Just less than one-half of the women in the two districts thought that men had these qualities and therefore would be good leaders. A discussion group of men reported that people generally assumed that men would be better leaders; they used citations from the Bible to confirm that men are better leaders because they have interests outside the home, whereas women’s interests are confined to the home. The majority of the women, especially those in Kakamega, did not consider women to be good leaders. One woman reported that although she thought men were better leaders they had not been leading the country very well. More than one-half of the women in both districts thought that a combination of women and men would provide good leadership.

These women had been increasingly participating in the electoral process, as candidates, observers, managers, campaigners, and voters. More participated in the 1997 general election than in the 1992 one. In the 1997 election, women in Kakamega mainly vied for civic positions, whereas women in Makueni mainly vied for parliamentary positions. Significantly more women voted in 1997 than in 1992. This appeared to be related to their knowledge of the voting process and their understanding that voting was their right and that their vote would make a difference. More of these women attended campaign meetings and listened to the candidates. They hoped to elect leaders with good qualities. The increased civic awareness was attributable to the civic-education activities that followed the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women. In addition to being active in the parliamentary and civic elections, women in Kakamega and Makueni were also participating more in the election of committee members in local organizations, such as schools, women’s groups, and churches.

However, these women faced many obstacles in their attempts to participate in the electoral process. Some of the women who attended campaign meetings found that the meetings were violent and that the language of the candidates was offensive. Such behaviour prevented the women from effectively participating in governance. As well, because of the women’s poverty and the general failure of elected leaders to deliver on their promises, one-third of the women accepted bribes for their votes, mainly money, but also food and clothing. The women blamed this bribery on their elected leaders, who failed to offer women a chance to discuss their problems concerning wife beating, water supply, land, firewood, health facilities, illiteracy, education, credit, income, markets, etc. After the election, the leaders “disappear,” and when asked why, they blame the government. Other obstacles to women’s effective participation in the 1997 general election included illiteracy, inadequate resources to facilitate communication, especially transportation, and cultural barriers, especially harassment from men and their failure to stand behind their wives.

Women’s sources of information

Kenyan women still depend on traditional sources of information and lack control over the most effective sources (Table 4).
 
 

Table 4. The main sources of information for women.
	Proportion of respondents (%)
Characteristic		Total		Makueni		Kakamega
Do you listen to the radio?     Yes     No		62.0 38.0		57.0     43.0		67.0     33.0
Do you listen to audiocassettes?     Yes     No		27.0 73.0		21.0     79.0		33.0     67.0
Do you watch television?     Yes     No		10.5 89.5		10.0     90.0		11.0     89.0
Have you heard about computers?     Yes     No		54.5 45.5		54.0     46.0		55.0     45.0
Have you used computers?     Yes     No		0.1 99.0		0.1     99.0		0.1     99.0
Do you know about e-mail?     Yes     No		0.5 99.5		0.1     99.0		0.0    100.0
Have you heard about fax?     Yes     No		10.0 90.0		8.0     92.0		12.0     88.0
Have you used a fax?     Yes     No		2.5 97.5		2.0     98.0		3.0     97.0
Do you have telephone in this location?     Yes     No		47.0 53.0		2.0     98.0		88.0     12.0
Do you have a post office in this location?     Yes     No		47.5 52.5		2.0     98.0		93.0       7.0
Is there a community centre in this location?     Yes     No		6.5 93.5		9.0     91.0		4.0     96.0
What types of roads do you have in this location?     All-weather roads     Tarmacked road     Earth road		22.6 12.5 88.5		23.0     24.0     90.0		21.0       1.0     87.0
Main source of information     Radio     Television     Newspaper     Chief’s or District Officer’s baraza     Relatives or friends     Women’s groups     Church		53.0   3.0   0.5 32.0   8.0   1.0   2.0		39.0       3.0       1.0     46.0     10.0       1.0        —		67.0       4.0        —     18.0       6.0       1.0       4.0
What type of information do you obtain from this source?     Health     Farming     Microenterprise     Politics     Marketing      Education     Employment     Other		77.0 73.5   7.5 37.0   6.0 36.0 10.0   1.0		88.0     79.0       4.0     30.0       6.0     34.0     12.0        —		71.0     68.0     11.0     44.0       6.0     39.0       8.0       1.0
How do you store the information?     Audiocassette     Videocassette     Written and filed     Computer diskette     Other		1.0   1.0 27.5    — 70.5		1.0       2.0       6.0        —     91.0		1.0        —     49.0        —     50.0
Source: FASI (1999).

Radio and television

Radio and television are major sources of information in Kenya. In 1993, just more than one-half of the Kenyan population had access to a radio (NCPD–CBS 1993). The proportion of the rural population with access to a radio was 48%. The needs assessment for the Women and Governance project established that two-thirds of the women in Makueni and slightly more in Kakamega belonged to households with radios. However, the men in the households owned the radios, and the women had limited access. Fewer households had audiocassette players. These too belonged to the men, and few women listened to them. In Kenya, very few households had televisions (11%), especially in rural areas (3%) (NCPD–CBS 1993). In Kakamega and Makueni, fewer than 10% of the households had televisions, but slightly more women watched TV, suggesting that people need information and that some people who do not own a television watch TV in places where it is available.

Roads, post office, telephone, fax, and computers

Transport and communication networks are very limited in Kenya, especially in rural areas. Kakamega and Makueni have few all-weather roads. Respondents in Kakamega had a post office, but those in Makueni did not. Limited, mostly public, telephone facilities were available in the project areas. One-third of the women could reach a telephone, and fewer than one-half of them had used a telephone. In both Kakamega and Makueni, very few women had heard of a fax or used one. Even fewer women in the study areas knew about e-mail. Only two women in the sample (one in Kakamega and one in Makueni) knew about e-mail or how to use facilities for e-mail. A larger proportion of the women in Kakamega and Makueni, however, had heard about computers or seen them. Only one women in each district had ever actually used one.

Community-based information centres

Fewer than 10% of the women in the project knew about the community-based information centre in their district. Lack of community-based information centres or of information about them in the study areas precluded women from accessing the information services offered at the centres, such as libraries, televisions, cinema, video, social-networking venues, and training.

The radio was the main source of information for the women in Kakamega and Makueni; it was used by more than one-half of these women. The Chief’s or District Officer’s baraza was the main source of information for one-third of the women. Relatives and friends constituted an important information source. Other sources of information were the church, government officers, and community-based training initiatives. Leaders and members of women’s groups supplied information, particularly on politics, to other women. Information was also obtained from letters, telephone calls, and telegrams. These sources supplied information on health, farming, education, politics, employment, marketing, and small enterprise. Most information was not stored. Sources of information were limited by the facilities, such as poor telephones, electricity, and related technology, including computers. What few facilities there were belonged to men, and the women, who were occupied with household chores, were unable to use them. Even where facilities such as telephones were available, women were unable to use them.
 
 

Discussion and conclusion

IEC and advocacy

Women have demonstrated their capacity to contribute to development and even to manage their own development. However, for women to be efficient and effective, they need IEC and advocacy to encourage their use of ICTs. This project developed IEC and advocacy materials to demystify ICTs and demonstrate women’s need of ICTs to participate effectively in electoral politics and to respond to their own daily needs. The project trained the women to use computers, e-mail, and the Internet for the following tasks:

• To store, transfer, and retrieve information related to their lifelong-learning activities in health, education, business, farming, elections, etc.;

• To easily and quickly get in touch with each other across the country and talk to each other, interact, and develop plans, decisions, and strategies to improve their women’s participation in electoral politics (for example, knowing which female candidates to vote for during the election, etc.);

• To conduct personal business, such as searching for employment, looking for markets for farm products or crafts in other countries and regions, and receiving orders;

• To prepare training materials, such as posters, and improve or change them to suit women’s needs; and

• To provide training, communication, and duplication services for a fee (this will sustain the project).

Targeting women

Women were the primary target of the Women and Governance project because they were numerically dominant in the two districts and project locations and in the various age groups. Poverty had pushed most men out of Kakamega and Makueni to search for employment in urban areas, and this left the women to head the households and manage the rural farms and small-scale enterprises. Furthermore, women are the custodians of indigenous information so critical to family and community welfare, particularly in the areas of health, environmental management, and religion. As communities urbanize and modernize, this type of information will disappear, unless women are integrated into modern systems of information production, transfer, and consumption.

Priority areas for intervention

Civic education

Poverty in Kenya has been feminized. This poverty has largely resulted from women’s failure to access key resources. Marginalization of women is related to their low representation in decision-making bodies, especially Parliament and local government. Although women in Kenya have an increasing level of civic awareness and are participating more in the electoral process, they remain poor and geographically isolated and fail to network, engage in peer support, or formulate a common political agenda. Women’s use of ICTs would bridge their geographic isolation and promote interaction, networking, sharing, and formulation of common strategies to address their interests.

Small-scale enterprises

Small-scale enterprises have the greatest potential to generate employment in Kenya, especially among women. A substantial number of women in the target areas are engaged in small-scale enterprises. They have limited markets and are being exploited. They should be introduced to ICTs to enable them to transform this sector with information on supplies, quality control, raw materials, pricing, markets, and technologies. Such information would enable these enterprises to contribute more to the growth of the region and to women’s management of this sector.

Challenges to the Women and Governance project

Information packaging

Africa is presently a net consumer of information packaged in other societies. Access to such information could improve productivity. In addition to using existing information packages, the project will assemble and package information on indigenous systems of production and services familiar to women and make it more generally accessible to women.

Addressing the cultural dimension

Women are familiar with the indigenous communication systems dominant in the rural areas and have some control over them. These systems also have a lot of gender biases and prejudices embedded in them. We need to identify and understand these biases and prejudices and to sensitively repackage the information so that it portrays women positively.

Community-based information centres

Community-based information centres are designed to deliver a wide range of information services within communities. This initiative is highly technological and targets women as a disadvantaged group but also encompasses the social, economic, recreational, and governance activities in every sector of society. This involves ICT diffusion, which in turn involves computerized equipment and microelectronic product design and related know-how. Successful use of ICTs also requires technical change to enable us to adapt a number of given technologies, make continuous improvements, and meet a widening range of needs.

Infrastructure

The average teledensity in Kenya is 1 line per 100 inhabitants and is especially low in the target areas. These areas also lack proper access to postal services, electricity, and all-weather roads. No ICT service providers are currently operating there. Alternative sources of energy, such as solar, will be used in areas without electricity (Summit Strategies 1998).

Telephone lines, power, and roads for access are the needed infrastructure for e-mail and the Internet in Kenya. The representatives of Kenya Post and Telecommunications, Kenya Power and Lighting, the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and ICT service providers are therefore treated as partners in the implementation of the project. They also participated in the stakeholders conference (FASI 1999b).

Policy

In 1997, the Kenyan government published its Postal and Telecommunications Sector Policy Statement, defining the framework for developing the postal and telecommunications subsectors. The key statements were that Kenya would construct more telephone lines to increase the teledensity in rural and urban areas, facilitate private-sector participation in the telecommunications sector, and change the status of the Kenya Posts and Telecommunication Corporation (a monopoly operator) (Mureithi 1998).

References

FASI (Family Support Institute). 1999a. Report of the needs assessment of Central Isukha location in Kakamega District and Nguumo location in Makueni District for the Women and Governance project. FASI, Nairobi, Kenya.

——— 1999b. Report of the Stakeholders Conference on "Enhancing Women’s Participation in Governance Through Access to Civic Information and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Kakamega and Makueni Districts: Where Are We Now? Where Do We Go from Here? How Do We Get There?" FASI, Nairobi, Kenya.

Mureithi, M. 1998. Information and communications — the potential for take off. In Wamuyu, G.; Shaw, R., ed., Our problems, our solutions. An economic and public policy agenda for Kenya. The Institute of Economic Affairs, London, UK.

NCPD–CBS (National Council for Population and Development; Central Bureau for Statistics). 1993. Kenya Development and Health Survey. Macro International Inc., Calverton, MD, USA.

Summit Strategies. 1998. Status of existing Kenya telecommunications networks. Brief notes for Oxfam. Summit Strategies, Boston, MA, USA.

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