Ewuraba - Professional African Women with Class and Style

BBC Radio Interview with Beatrice Arthur at Douala, Cameroon | 2010

Sole Designer, B'Exotiq Designs

The Birth of the Afro-cosmpolitan Designer

Visit Beatrice's Website - www.bq.awuraba.com

The New Media and Gender Empowerment

The information economy, driven by the new media – Internet and web applications (like blogs) -, has birthed a space for participation, access, expression and creativity. Concerning gender development, we ask, what is the impact of the new media on the African woman? Women play a critical role in the starting and establishing small business opportunities in Africa. However, a number of newly-established ventures in developing economies fade out in the early stage of business, within 42 months [2]. There are multi-prong challenges including access to information and new skills which contribute to this failure. These challenges stifle the contribution of African women to the society.

Research studies have discussed the impact of the new media on women as including empowerment, informed decision-making, collaboration and novel approaches to sustaining livelihoods [3] [4]. However, these opportunities depends on the ‘capability to function’ – thus the ability of the African woman to go beyond access to new media and use associated functions and services which empower them in their individual ventures and contribute to sustaining their livelihoods. This capability to function starts from educating and training in the use of new media, and hence, the objective of this workshop.

Ewuraba, under the sponsorship of PearlRichards Foundation, is organizing a two-day workshop on the New Media and Gender Empowerment in Africa. The workshop has three interrelated objectives, namely:

• To educate and train participants (African women) on how to use electronic resources and applications to support and promote their creative ventures.
• To offer participants an opportunity to share, discuss and learn from individual career experiences and profiles documented on the www.ewuraba.com.

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