Tunisia - A national workshop on the «Digital upskilling of women and girls in Tunisia» is organised on September 4-7 in Tunis by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) gender equality and women empowerment section in partnership with the Ministry of Women, Family, Childhood and Seniors and the Ministry of Communication Technologies, the Commission sais in a press release.

The goal is to increase the country's capacity to run its own training programmes by training trainers in the field of digitalisation, build a critical mass of women and girls with relevant skills for future jobs, while preparing them to leverage the information economy and increasing digital demand.

The workshop focuses on a range of topics including cybersecurity, digital marketing, online outreach, connecting women to regional and global markets and information streams, digital content creation, how to harness the information economy as well as utilising emerging tools including artificial intelligence and workflow automation, according to the ECA official website.

A later phase of the project planned for 2024 will focus on ecommerce, digital finance, space science and remote sensing to boost women's contribution into agriculture and climate resilience.

This project is part of ECA efforts, across Africa, to increase the low usage and participation of women in the digital space, despite high numbers of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. «Our programme helps women to navigate identified security concerns that hinder their utilisation of technologies and introduces them to emerging tools that save their time and boost economic empowerment,» said Keiso Matashane-Marite, ECA Chief of section for Gender Affairs ahead of the training.

For her part, Zuzana Brixiova Schwidrowski, Director of the ECA office for North Africa, stressed the importance of including more women in the Tunisian workforce to increase the country's capacity for inclusive growth, reduce income inequality and mitigate the impact of population aging on the labour force.

According to the National Institution of Statistics of Tunisia, women accounted for 30.1 percent of the workforce in the second quarter of 2022, with 21.1 percent of female workers being unemployed.

African countries experienced an increased reliance on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), digitalization and the use of online platforms to conduct business transactions, learning and development activities post COVID-19. This shift is currently providing an opportunity for women to step into new economic roles and contribute to a faster economic recovery and resilient growth.

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