The largest gender gaps in internet use are in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. As countries look to grow their digital economies as part of a post-pandemic recovery, what does this strategy mean for women and girls in these regions?

This session brings together experts and advocates from these two regions to share strategies and reflect on forthcoming research from the Alliance for Affordable Internet on the costs of exclusion and the continued denial of equitable access to the internet for women and girls.

A continued failure to close the digital gender gap presents not just a moral but economic failure. This session will aim to answer the question of what strategies are most effective to change the status quo through a South-South knowledge sharing exchange across these two regions and for stakeholders throughout the world fighting for gender equality in the online world.

Our session anticipates having a majority of the participants, including our panelists, to participate online. As such, we will run our session with an ‘online-first’ approach: everyone, including participants in the room, will primarily participate through their own device. We will use the chat function to have a robust conversation and collect documentation around individual experiences within the session.