المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

There is much activity around digital agriculture, with one of the key technologies being the use of mobile devices to bring better information to rural communities.

But rarely do I see the gender angle being mentioned with the digital revolution and the huge gender bias in digital technologies.

Internet users in India were 71% male and 29% female, as of Oct 2015. Mobile penetration rates for women are 28% while they are 40% for men.

A week ago I visited 2 villages. As usual a large group gathered and were very polite an engaging. In the first village I asked who had mobile phones. All the men put up their hands clasping their phones. Not one women had a mobile phone. When I asked about this they said they could not afford to own more phones – so obviously the men had first rights to the access to information and communications.

However I was inspired in the second village where I met extremely active Self Help Groups and the vast majority of the women had mobile phones and some even smart phones.

My point is to bring the dimension of the digital technologies and the digital divide into solutions as the new technologies can give access to important knowledge in health and nutrition and connecting this to agriculture.