The African Centre for Women, Information and Communications Technology
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Mission Statement
The African Centre for Women, Information and Communications Technology (ACWICT) is a Kenya-based ICT for Development Organization registered under the NGO Act of Kenya 1990 with a mission is to promote women and youth access to and knowledge of ICTs as tools for sustainable development. ACWICT works to address challenges faced by high potential but disadvantaged women and youth from urban informal settlements and rural Kenya providing solutions that improve their access to education, employment, health, food security and leadership opportunities for better livelihoods. This is achieved through provision of digital and vocational skills for employability and entrepreneurship; advocacy for women and youth friendly digital inclusion policies at regional, national, county in priority sectors of our operation; promoting greater participation of women and youth in the digital economy through awareness creation campaigns; and conducting research on relevant digital solutions for under-served communities. Our core values are based on professionalism, partnerships, respect, transparency, diversity and innovation. ACWICT is managed by an independent and competent Board of Directors and a secretariat with qualified staff in areas of expertise. Our head office is based in Nairobi with projects spanning into the wider East African Community region. The day to day activities at ACWICT are managed by an Executive Director who reports to the organization’s Board. ACWICT has established supportive project governance structures, robust financial systems, functional monitoring, reporting, evaluation and learning systems that can be adapted to projects in its areas of engagement with minimal reviews.
About This Cause
For the last two decades, ACWICT has been at the forefront, driving change and staying ahead of trends in working to address ACWICT works to address challenges faced by high potential but disadvantaged women and youth from urban informal settlements and rural Kenya providing solutions that improve their access to education, employment, health, food security and leadership opportunities for better livelihoods. We have invested in building functional relationships with the National and County Governments that provide expertise, infrastructure and valuable knowledge about current processes, historical information, and industry insights. We have also developed deep connections with key government agencies and private sector (KEPSA, AJIRA, NITA, KICD, TVETA,) implementing skills development programs and using their grassroots facilities in training. In addition, we have built strong relationships with public and private universities in Kenya who have supported reach to young people in higher institutions of learning. Key Programmatic Areas: Employability: ACWICT believes that access to productive employment, whether formal or informal is the surest way to improve one’s economic and social standing, that employment affords one the ability to meet the basic needs of life such as food, clothing, shelter, education and good health. The overall goal of our youth employability program is to improve employment prospects and income generating capacities of high potential and disadvantaged women and youth aged 18-35 years from urban informal settlements and rural Kenya. Key program activities include rapid labor market assessments; development of market-driven curriculum and training guides; delivery of digital, vocational, soft- and entrepreneurship skills training; mentorship and hand-holding; and job placements/linkage support. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACWICT, with funding support from UKAID is implementing the COVID-19 and Digital Employability program aimed at equipping 2,000 unemployed/underemployed young women including those who have lost their jobs/business opportunities due to Covid-19 disruption with market-driven online/digital work skills to enable them become re-employed or secure new employment and business opportunities in the online work and digital workspaces. The entire training program is delivered virtually through Microsoft Teams platform. The program has been designed to respond to the economic strains faced by marginalized young women in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic including loss of economic livelihoods and related anxiety and gender-based violence. 70% of the young women trained will be connected to employment opportunities in digital workspaces. The programme has incorporated a component on psycho-social support and mental wellness aimed at supporting young women affected by the pandemic. For more details, please visit https://www.acwict.org/employability/ Education: In an increasingly global society, it’s critical that we create and expand opportunities for young girls to access the kind of education that will enable them to navigate and lead the 21st-century world they are expected to inherit. While all subject areas are important, we know that to thrive in our technology-driven era, young people specifically women need to be supported in building their skills in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The overall goal of our education program is to create opportunities for girls and young women from rural and marginalized communities in Kenya to pursue careers computer science and computer science-driven fields. Key initiatives include Girls ICT Boot Camps, TECH4Girls (an initiative of GSMA) and Women Science Teachers program. For more information, please visit https://www.acwict.org/education/ Health: The overall goal of this program is to reduce HIV Infection among Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Kenya. According to the Kenya National Aids Control Council (NACC), 52,800 new HIV infections occurred among adults in 2017. Of the new adult HIV infections, 44,800 (84.8%) occurred among adults aged 15 years and above, majority of who were young women. ACWICT’s intervention in this sector recognizes that availability and accessibility to employment opportunities, whether formal or informal can be critical factors in deterring young women from engaging risky behaviors such as transactional sex work and significantly decrease their exposure risk to HIV. We believe that employment is the surest way for the young women to achieve their financial independence and shun away from using sex as currency or tolerate sexual infidelity all together and gain pathways out of poverty. The model was selected as a best practice for possible replication by the PEPFAR funded DREAMS program in the 16 countries of its operation. With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, we have expanded our heath program to cover digital skills for healthcare workers. The project funded by UKAID aims at enhancing the capacity of health care workers to apply digital skills in the delivery of effective health care services in Laikipia County of Kenya. The project will do this by equipping 300 health care workers with basic skills for use of digital devices effectively and efficiently in patient management as well as enhancing the capacity of Laikipia County Health Department to coordinate and digitalize essential health interventions. This programme is implemented in partnership with the County Government of Laikipia. For more information, please visit: https://www.acwict.org/health/ Women and Trade: ACWICT’s women and trade program seeks to increase the participation of women entrepreneurs and producers in cross-border trade in East Africa by leveraging on opportunities presented by ICT’s. The program ensures that they enjoy greater economic benefits including reduced transaction costs, efficiencies in logistic processes and expanding market opportunities leading to lower trade costs, higher flows and higher profits. In October 2019, under the ‘The Incubator for Integration and Development in East Africa” (IIDEA), GIZ Awarded ACWICT a one (1) year project dubbed; Expanding Women and Youth ICT innovation opportunities for economic integration within the EAC member states’. The project aims at developing and nurturing ICT solutions for trade for women and youth cross-border trainers from three East African States namely Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The idea is to empower them to embrace use of ICT in eliminating the barriers that affect trade flows and also enhance competitiveness of the regional trading partners through ICT enabled interventions for efficiency. For more details, please visit: https://www.acwict.org/initiative/expanding-women-and-youth-ict-innovation-opportunities-for-economic-integration-within-the-eac-member-states/ Software Development and Innovation: ACWICT recognizes that Coding (whether mobile or web-based) has become an essential skill across the world, simply because computer science is a fundamental skill for all 21st century careers. Our Software Development and Innovation program implements innovation boot camps that provide a platform for aspiring developers to gain coding/programming skills and links to emerging entrepreneurial opportunities within the growing tech space. Through the Innovation Week Boot camps we aim to create a community of young women coders who can provide sustainable technology-driven solutions/innovations to some of the challenges that communities experience in accessing services. Participants involved after are equipped with coding/programming skills over a one-week period. Agriculture and Food Security: Agriculture is the backbone of Kenya’s economy, contributing 26 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and another 27 per cent of GDP indirectly through linkages with other sectors. The sector employs more than 40 per cent of the total population and more than 70 per cent of Kenya’s rural people making it a very important for poverty reduction in Kenya. The sector accounts for 65 per cent of the export earnings, and provides the livelihood (employment, income and food security needs) for more than 80 per cent of the Kenyan population and contributes to improving nutrition through production of safe, diverse and nutrient dense foods. In 2004, ACWICT worked with a team of graduate students from the University of Michigan to design an innovation that utilizes technology as a tool to create agricultural market efficiencies in Eastern Africa. Currently, ACWICT is developing the AgriTradeKenya (ATK) digital platform that will connect fishing, livestock and crop producing rural communities in the Lake Victoria Basin Region of Kenya with entrepreneurs, processors and agricultural service providers. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACWICT with funding from UKAID is implementing a Digital Agriculture for Accelerated and Inclusive Post COVID-19 Economic Recovery in Laikipia County of Kenya whose overall goal is to increase access and utilization of relevant digital agricultural content for sustainable agriculture and food security in the county. The project targets 5,000 farmers in the county. Key outcomes from the project include: increased digital skills capacity and use of digital resources for sustainable agriculture and food security in the County; increased variety and availability of relevant and localized digital agricultural content among farmers including in diverse language options (Kiswahili and other local languages); and increased awareness on the existence and benefits of agricultural digital platforms among farmers in Laikipia county. To-date, ACWICT has reached over 178,000 women and youth its programs. Current and past partners who have funded our work include UKAID; Microsoft Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation (DJA) initiative; US Department of State, Office of Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) - DREAMS Innovation Challenge; Intel Corporation; GIZ (IIDEA); Motorola Solutions Foundations, Facebook; International Youth Foundation; GSMA; UNDP and UNWomen.