Nakawa Women Councilors trained on Digital Safety and security-Uganda Media Women’s Association UMWA

3 March 2023, 9:29 pm

Byamukama Akozious

Uganda Media Women’s Association has trained about 15 Councilors from Nakawa Division in Kampala City at UMWA premises in Kisaasi. The training aimed at providing skills on use of digital tools to communicate with their electorate and how to deal with Online Gender based violence.

Most women councilors who attended the training where aware of the social media platforms however, lacked practical skills on how to utilize them and showed interest to know more about twitter, whatsApp and Facebook. The counclors were aslo helped on how to create strong passwords to safe guard their information against hackers  

Ndagire Laila the chief facilitator engaged councilors in practical sessions where they created twitter accounts and learnt about the different settings on applications like whatapps, and facebook. She informed them that they should utilize the platforms to connect with their electorate “create a data base of your electorate through whatsapp groups and easily communicate with them and understand their needs. This will help you serve them better”.

Bukoto 2B woman Councilor Kenyange Milly thanks Umwa for having trained them and assured to use the skills to know what affecting her community and providing solutions. Kanyenge said she will train more women in her community to get the same skills on Digital platforms to ease communication and delivery of services

In 2021, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) revealed that the proportion of household members that used the internet was lower for women (5%) relative to men (8%). It is worth noting that affordability issues were highlighted among the main reasons for the low internet access.

Margret Sentamu, the Executive Director of Uganda Women’s Association says this training is aligned the women’s month which will be celebrated on 8^th match 2023 under the theme DigitAll , Innovation and Technology for  Gender Equality.

In the someway Margret wants  Government to legalize some of social  handles such as Facebook so that the councilors  trained can use them to deliver services to their people and also asks  Government to reduce taxes on Gadgets used in digital communication such as Phones , Laptops among others such that all women Uganda can has access to them.