Makerere CIT Trains 150 Women in ICT

As the global race to bridge the digital divide between the North and the South is given impetus and incentive by the growth of southern economies, today this need is nowhere greater than in the emerging sub-Saharan markets. Seemingly trapped by illiteracy, overpopulation, breakdown in infrastructure, lack of access and soaring internet costs, the challenge to harness technology to aid Africa leap frog the divide seems even more daunting. Uganda serves as a microcosm for this African dilemma.

Another part of this complex conundrum is the fact that although women are substantially part of the business environment today, most of them know little or nothing about ICT and its potential to alter/or exponentially increase their access, use and leveraging of information technologies to help their businesses.

The Makerere University Faculty of Computing & IT (CIT) under its Community Outreach program has just finished training 150 women in basic ICT skills. The women are engaged in different business and entrepreneurship ventures but mostly consist of teachers.

The training included skills in use of Microsoft Word, Spreadsheets, Email, Introduction to computers and Power point Presentations.

CIT has done other trainings in the past for the Uganda Police Force, Uganda People's Defence Force, Makerere University Teaching and Non-teaching staff and will continue to train members of the public and private sectors as part of its commitment to increase ICT literacy in Uganda. Currently, 400 staff from Mulago Hospital is under ICT training at the faculty.

My big question is; Is it enough? Is it enough to train our women, and pump them with IT skills when they are still struggling under bad marriages and sexual harassment? As I ponder these thoughts what keeps coming to me is a phrase from a book I love deeply: Jane Eyre; where Rochester as he looks at the plain and yet deeply moving Jane says to himself and almost to God "It will atone." What will atone? The new life blood in this new young girl who he feels deeply about will atone for the trickery that led him to marry a woman with hereditary madness who he now keeps locked up in one of the rooms of his huge mansion. Can all those years of putting our women down be erased by giving them special treatment and advantages? I don't know anything for a fact but this I know: it will ATONE.

Our Women

Our women became the men they wished to marry.
Out in the land of desperation where the promise had been so bright,
Where the sun rose every day without ceasing, and our skin glistened a dark, luminous color in the sun,
There where Idi forced men to do things unspeakable, there where women saw untold horrors!
And there was great weeping in that land.

Twenty seven guns later

In that land, the men no longer are.
They left a long time ago…
Gone, like the cat to see the king.
They cower, talk in hushed tones in bars, and go home late.
So they never look into their sons’ eyes, and tell them of the value of an honest day’s work.
In that land they all worry about the gum -chewing Englishman, the Frenchman who loves young boys.
The men are all gone from this land.

Twenty seven guns and ten years later

The women looked at their land; saw no men and they were sad.
They searched and looked but the men were hard to find.
Embattled times. When terror brought a nation to its knees, a nation would send out a call for heroes.
But the men were hard to find. And it seemed like a nation might plunge into the abyss.
It seemed that all would be lost.

Twenty seven guns and twenty years later

And the darkness spread further in the land. But not for long because
When our motherland called for heroes, these women stood up to be counted .
Mothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, aunties. They all stood up.
When our motherland called for heroes, they were the fathers of the motherland.
When our motherland called for heroes, these women became the men they wished to marry.

To find the men, they would go. They would groom their sons. They would make them men.

And they raised a generation of Sons and Lovers. Of .... *sigh*
They raised daughters who worked and provided.
Daughters who counseled and handled business.
Who worked and earned and saved.
Women who went to university, and beat the men.
And who dated liberally and occasionally popped the question.
Who took the sick child to hospital, and paid the house bills.
And bought the meat in the house. They took on all these roles and more.

Our women became the men they wished they had married.