Do you know that there are more Nigerian men than women online? see why

The online gender gap that keeps most Nigerian women off the Internet is being caused by Internet illiteracy and high cost of access, a report by Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN) has identified.

PIN, a social enterprise that connects Nigerians with information technology technology (ICT) opportunities says that the study was conducted to understand the technology adoption pattern across the country. 

While almost all the women interviewed owned or had access to a mobile phone and used them for voice calls nearly every day, only 50% use a combination of voice calls and SMS, according to the report. Only 34% use a combination of voice calls, SMS and Internet-based communication and only 2% of women interviewed use their mainly Internet-based communication.

According to the PIN report, a survey of the gender gap in ICT  was conducted in the capital cities or main economic hubs of 10 countries that include Lagos, the economic capital of Nigeria.

While almost all the women interviewed owned or had access to a mobile phone and used them for voice calls nearly every day, only 50% use a combination of voice calls and SMS, according to the report. 

Only 34% use a combination of voice calls, SMS and Internet-based communication and only 2% of women interviewed use their mainly Internet-based communication.

The low Internet usage could have a direct relationship with cost, with about 67% of the women seemingly able to afford only N50 – N800 of airtime weekly, according to the PIN report.

1GB data plan costs about N2, 500 on the average on Nigerian telecoms networks, with 1GB data plan on MTN Nigeria, the most widely used mobile network, costing around N3, 500 at the time of collecting the data.

Again, only up to 3% of both male and female respondents have had to use paid public access, and only 2% have had a chance at free public access and both men and women surveyed identified cost as the main barrier to access, with up to 18% of women having to depend on their spouse to pay for their Internet access, the report further reveals.

There is a low level of YouTube users as only 9% of the female respondents use YouTube with only 15% of the males, the study discovered, with the explanation that the low numbers on YouTube may be attributed to the volume and cost of data required to stream videos.

Most of the information provided by the Federal Government of Nigeria about women’s health, rights and other services that promote their well-being only reach a limited locality offline as websites and social media handles are mostly used as news blogs.

The PIN report also explains that most of these web pages are in English, a language that women with limited education and are less likely to be able to read or understand. This generally results in further obscurity and isolation of many women under these conditions since there is a higher percentage of educated men than women in Africa.

The report notes that two-thirds of the world’s 870 million illiterate people are women with the lowest literacy rate in 13 African countries and 60% of the 100 million school age children in the developing world are girls who grow up without access to basic education.

The PIN report however reveals that 18% of women who participated in the survey and do not use the Internet said that the main reason they do not currently use the Internet is because they do not know how to use it.

In addition to digital literacy and lack of information, another clear barrier extracted from the survey is affordability, the report states, adding that many urban poor communities in the Lagos still find access unaffordable.