Women in Africa and Web 2.0 Technology

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Submitted by sokari on 23 June, 2008 - 16:58.
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Ore Somolu is a Nigerian blogger and Executive Director of the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC).  Beth Kanter profiles Ore's work with women and technology in Nigeria as well as her own personal experience of mentoring for the W.TEC project. 

 I've known Oreoluwa Somolu virtually for several years.   I came across Ore's writing via Sokari Ekine's fantastic bridge blogging of the African blogosphere on Global Voices.  I was a mentor on Ore's Blog Mentoring Project in Africa as Joitske Hulsebosch also writes about.  I also had a chance to work with Ore through Nancy White and KM4DEV Technology Stewardship issue.  It is amazing to me that we have this rich history of working on project together, but we have never met face-to-face!

Oreoluwa Somolu is Executive Director of the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC).   So, when she invited to participate as a mentor in the Networking for Success project at the the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre.   Of course, said yes.

The project will teach women how to use Web 2.0 tools and other ICTs to effectively develop and advance their work. Participants are learning how to use these tools to initiate and manage projects; as well as identify networking opportunities with other organizations. This project builds upon the work of the Blogs for African Women (BAWo) initiative; an earlier project aimed at introducing blogging to young Nigerian girls.

The mentors are assigned a topic and week and write a post.   The idea is to have a conversation with the participants.  They include:

So, this is my week to participate and my topic was "Effective Networking Online."  I decided to share some inspiration from two women bloggers who have often inspired me about effective personal networking — Liz
Strauss and Connie Bensen.   I've boiled it down to a few networking principles that work not matter what tool or site you're using. 

So, come join the conversation over at the project blog and share your thoughts with these amazing women in Africa about effective online networking.

 Note, "Beth's Blog: How Non-Profits Can Use Social Media" is one of those blogs you need to read  everyday.  It is an exceptional resource for everything on Web 2.0 and technology in general for Non-Profits.

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