Economic Potentials of Gendered Mobile Communication: Digitization Communication and Financial Independence in East Africa

Abstract

Digital technologies keep people in contact by removing time or place constraints (Vanden Abeele et al., 2018; Komen, 2016b; Komen, 2020). Additionally, digital technologies such as mobile telephony enable women to set up trading or service enterprise, organize delivery of consignments, and know market prices but also portent precarious realities. According to Kim (2022), for instance, women in Kenya have limited property rights and continue to require approval of their husbands or male members of the family to conduct financial activities. Drawing on the author’s previous works and desktop reviews of other works done in East Africa, on financial inclusion, and on women mobile technology use, the author finds the cited case of Kenya as similar to that of Tanzania and Uganda context for rural women. Many initiatives aimed at empowering women through communication technologies fail to acknowledge and address the intersecting and contextual factors that influence women’s ability to benefit from digital technologies such as mobile telephony. Such consideration includes individual attributes, such as gender, and socially and marginalized groups such as women living in rural contexts and impeding cultural norms. This chapter shall review literature on these dimensions of women’s access and use of mobile technology for small-scale businesses and to access these services despite their affirmed vulnerabilities and marginalization.