CITAD trains 21 women on digital policy analysis

…gives 225 cash prizes to outstanding participants

From Paul Orude Bauchi

Worried by the low representation of women in Information Communication Technology (ICT) agencies in the country, the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has trained 21 women on digital policy analysis in order to address the gap.

This was disclosed by CITAD’s Fatima Baba Kura, at an experience sharing capacity building meeting with the trained participants held at Command Guest House, Bauchi, on Thursday.

She disclosed that the participants were draw from four states of Bauchi, Gombe, Kano and Jigawa.

Baba Kura, who is the convener of the meeting, explained that the training was part of CITAD’s project with support from Association for Progressive Communication to address low representation and bullying of women in the digital circle.

She disclosed that over 100 applications were received out of which 25 participants were shortlisted but ended up training 21.

She said the capacity training was a follow up to the previous one and would enable participants to share their experiences in advocacy visits to their various communities in efforts to address the low representation of women in the digital space

“We are here with the participants we trained a month ago on digital policy issues in the digital space,” she said.

“What prompted us to start this project which started in September and will end December 31, 2023, is that we figured out that there is low representation of women in key ICT positions. 

“We actually carried out a survey in some key ICT agencies in the country NITAD, NCC and the likes and found that there was low representation of women in these key ICTs agencies.

“According to the policy in Nigeria women should be presented at least 35 threshold. But the survey found low representation of women that in some agencies as low as 10 percent.

“There is a need to train young women and individuals in various communities so that they can be advocating in their various communities that women need to be represented in certain positions at either the managerial level or board level so that when issues of women come into existence along the line of work they can advocate for it and give better recommendations”

She said the participants shared experiences and challenges and what they figured out during the advocacy visits to different stakeholders within their various communities.

“A lot of them found there was low representation of women at the grassroots and a lot of women are scared of being in leadership positions and the men are not helping them to get to the tops,” she said.

Baba Kura explained that women need to be supported by men to achieve their potentials for the overall development of the society.

“The participants were actually well received in their advocacies and the stakeholders were willing to enhance the advocacies beyond what they took to them,” she said.

According to the convener, CITAD’s expectation for the participants is that as champions trained previously, they are expected to continue advocating for women inclusion in the digital space so that their voices can be held.

Baba Kura disclosed that Prizes were given to participants that excelled as part of CITAD’s activity for the project after the training on digital policy analysis.

“The young women from the four states were tasked to carry out an advocacy visit as well as writing an article in form of competition where they looked into the issue of policy related in their community and scored according to the guidelines provided for them,” she said.

“After selecting the article we gave them to judges whom were selected based on their knowledge their specialty we selected three judges whom are all females  following the criteria of language expression, their argument  and logic, data source that were given, the originality, whether the articles was plagiarized or  not and the ,length of the article.

“Out of the selected articles submitted we had three winners that emerged. The first position went to Sadiya Lawan Dan Yaro from Kano State, with cumulative points of 124 who went home with N100, 000, while Khadija Aliyu Zangina, also from Kano, emerged second  with 123  points and got reward of fromN75, 000 and Maimuna Yau Ibrahim, from Bauchi came third with 117 points and received cash of N50,000”