Ghana hosts ASWGT with Africa’s growing digital gender gap top agenda - ITREALMS

ITREALMS:

Africa’s leading technology innovators would gather in the city of Accra, Ghana for the second Africa Summit on Women and Girls in Technology, with top on the agenda being how to reduce the continent’s growing digital gender gap among women, reports ITREALMS.

The Summit, billed for October 9-11 , ITREALMS reports, comes at a crucial time when the world is set to reach 50 per cent connectivity as its aimed at designing solutions that will enable millions of African women and girls to benefit from access to technology and use their skills to build a better Africa for all.

The three-day event, ITREALMS report, would feature lightning talks from young African female technologists, as well as high-level discussions with many of Africa’s most prominent ICT policymakers and technology leaders today, including: Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications, Ghana; Dr Omobola Johnson, former Nigerian Minister of Communication Technology; Bitilokho Ndiaye, Gender Technical Advisor at Ministry of Communication, Telecommunications, Posts and Digital Economy, Senegal; and many others.

Bridging the digital gender gap is a critical step toward the vision of a thriving Africa — yet research has shown that women in some communities are up to 50 per cent less likely than men to be online. 

In Africa, where nearly 75 per cent of the population remains offline, this problem is particularly acute. The Summit will explore a range of relevant topic areas, with a focus on developing policy to advance “Access to affordable broadband, Women's rights online, Digital education and skills, and Digital entrepreneurship,” said the organisers, in a press statement available to ITREALMS.

The 2018 Africa Summit on Women and Girls in Technology is a collaboration between the World Wide Web Foundation, Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), Ghana Ministry of Communications, African Development Bank, Open Society Initiative for West Africa, Internet Society, Facebook, Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (Germany), Google, Swedish International Development Agency and UN Women.

Nkem Nweke/GEE

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ASWGT seeks African logo artists, dangles $1000

ITRealms:

The organisers of the 2016 Africa Summit on Women and Girls in Technology (ASWGT) are seeking African artists to design its logo, reports ITRealms.

ASWGT, ITRealms reports, is a collaboration between the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), the World Wide Web Foundation, the Ghana­-India Kofi Annan Center of Excellence in ICT (AITI­-KACE), the African Development Bank, and UN Women.

In a public statement made available to ITRealms, ASWGT is seeking artists to design its logo, which must be creative, fun, colorful and inspiring logo designed by an African artist to show the world ASWGT vision.

The design, ITRealms gathered will be used for the first and future editions of the Summit.

“The inaugural summit will to take place in Accra, Ghana on September 13-14, 2016,” the organisers said, pointing out that through this first-ever event, ASWGT will bring together brilliant female leaders from across Africa to design solutions that will enable millions of African women and girls to benefit from access to technology—and use their skills to build a better Africa for all.

Keywords, ASWGT explained must include Africa, information and communication technology (ICT), Internet, women and girls, gender equality, female empowerment.

The prize for the logo design, ASWGT said is USD $1,000 plus a stipend to attend the summit.

The requirements for the logo, ITRealms reports include that the logos should be presented in both black-and-white and color, delivered in multiple formats such as  Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) file, Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

ASWGT also demands low-to-medium-resolution for web use, as well as hi-resolution for printed collateral such as brochures, trade show exhibit walls, t-shirts, stickers and for embroidered products namely polo shirts, hats, visors, vests to name a few.

In addition, ASWGT maintained that the logo design must satisfy 

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 accessibility guidelines and the copyright will be ceded to ASWGT, while they will make the logo available under a Creative Commons license.

Deadline for submission, ITRealms gathered is Friday, May 6, 2016, just as winners will be unveiled a week later on Friday, May 13, 2016.

To participate, artists must complete the entry form embedded on the ASWGT website page calling for this entry by Friday, May 6th.

This, ITRealms reports, would be followed by upload the logo submission in a shareable folder, such as via Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. and include the link in the form. We will showcase your entries on social media throughout the contest. 

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