Relevance and Priorities of ICT for Women in Rural Communities: A Case Study from Nigeria

Does microfinance with information and communication technology (ICT) impact poverty alleviation?

The paper describes the preliminary results of the evaluation of an ICT program for women in rural communities in Nigeria.

The focus group consisted of eight women who had never used ICT before and many issues such as normal modes of communication, frequency of use, reliability, relevance of ICT to their lives were investigated.

Pre-training finding revealed:

Most of the communication was related to emergencies, family health, financial assistance etc.
Most common means was verbal or hand delivered letters;
Most perceived ICT as unrealistic due to non availability of telephone and electricity.

Some of the post training findings on use of ICT:

To send messages to distant relatives;
To enhance social standing;
To encourage children for IT training;
To search for job opportunities in cities.

Some of the challenges in use of ICT:

Level of literacy among women;
Accessibility;
Financial feasibility.

The authors conclude by providing a brief description of ways in which the foundation is promoting the use of ICT in rural Nigeria and how it is being used to bring the distant communities together.