Dramatic shifts in the world of work through the digital economy bring a promise of creating more opportunities and better working conditions. However, social inequalities are often baked into these technologies. In countries, where the informal economy is a dominant source of income, especially for women, digital platforms can be both: a powerful driver of empowerment for enhancing freedom and human rights, and a source of new risks and exclusion, including emerging inequalities, forms of exploitation, threats to personal rights and safety.
Kenya, the “Silicon Savannah”
In a pioneering effort, Kenya has established what many observers deem essential digital infrastructure for the country’s development and achievement of the SDGs. The government has adopted an ambitious digitalization strategy, thereby greatly advancing its own connectivity, and becoming a model for the region and beyond. At the same time, the processes and mechanisms of digitalization in Kenya are currently being shaped by underlying intersectional disparities, including gender and post-colonial inequities, which are giving rise to a growing digital divide.
Risk of increasing economic exclusion
Whether in Kenya or elsewhere, experts agree that closing the gender gap in digital proficiency is crucial. If substantial population segments are left behind, “the empowered citizenry” in which everyone can thrive in the digital economy – promises set out in Kenya’s digitalization strategy – will not be met. What is more, the broader risk is not simply about lack of access to or use of digital services, but rather about economic exclusion more generally.
The research project and its goals
Against this background, the project UPDATE proposes a grounded and nuanced research and transformation approach to explore how enhanced connectivity and technology could be reimagined in a feminist way.
The project will scrutinize two areas in which digitalization has been seen as holding major promise for sustainable development: a) safe and dignified employment and b) women’s mobilization and political participation.
The research focuses on three particular “use cases”:
- Use of digital technologies by formal and informal women workers to access employment and related opportunities (e.g., training);
- Use of digital spaces by formal and informal women workers and female activists to mobilize, organize, and network amongst themselves and with other movements;
- Use of digital spaces by formal and informal women workers to influence decision-making and development of policies and practices that affect them.
UPDATE aims at improving women’s digital resilience, and to empower digital workers to influence relevant structures and decision-making processes. In a transdisciplinary approach, the Kenyan-Swiss research team will identify challenges, highlight successful examples, and outline gaps. These steps will serve to improve the design of digital spaces, applications, tools and processes to better respond to gender-specific needs in digital employment.
Strengthening digital resilience, self-determination and rights
Generated through a transdisciplinary framework, this type of knowledge will help strengthen the digital resilience of communities and employees in Kenya, maximizing the potential to promote women’s empowerment, workers’ rights, social protection, and political engagement in the context of the gig economy.
The research also contributes to debates about gendered aspects of technology, and the way in which the digital revolution shapes working relations, thereby perpetuating or transforming norms of class and gender.
Research sites and partners
The primary research location is Kibera, an informal settlement in Nairobi. Kibera is home to an estimated 1.5 million people living in extreme poverty. Despite this, digitalization has flourished here, with large-scale mobile phone use and the prevalence of mobile money exchange. The project seeks to include other peri-urban and rural case studies in Kenya in areas of high digitalization.
UPDATE is rooted in collaboration between Swiss and Kenyan research institutions, and Kenyan feminist tech-activists.
