Beyond Access: Enabling African Women to Shape the Digital and AI Economy
Digital inclusion is often measured by connection: who has internet access, who can use digital tools, and who is participating online. These are important measures of progress. But as artificial intelligence and digital technologies increasingly shape economies, industries, public services, and everyday life, I believe we need to ask a deeper question:
Once women are connected, what are they empowered to do with that access?
This question was at the centre of my contribution to a Digital@UNGA 2026 Affiliate Session, “The Bridge to the Unconnected: African Women as Architects of Inclusive Internet Governance, Universal Acceptance, and Information Integrity.”
The session, organised by Women in Technology in Nigeria (WITIN), the Association of Women in Technology in Nigeria (WITINPro), and the African Women School on Internet Governance, brought together speakers and participants to examine how African women can move from digital access towards structural agency within an increasingly technology-driven world.
My contribution focused particularly on what this transition could mean for African women as researchers, engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs, founders, and decision-makers within the emerging digital and AI economy.
Digital Access Is Essential, but Access Alone Is Not Agency
Expanding internet connectivity and access to digital and AI tools remains fundamental. Without access, meaningful participation is impossible.
But connectivity should be the beginning of digital inclusion, not its final destination.
As I reflected during the session, the question is not simply whether African women can access technologies developed elsewhere. It is whether they also have the knowledge, infrastructure, resources, networks, and opportunities required to create technologies, build enterprises, conduct research, commercialise innovations, and influence the decisions surrounding technological development.
This distinction matters because the people who design technologies also influence the problems those technologies are intended to solve, the communities they serve, and the assumptions embedded within them.
For African women to participate meaningfully in the digital and AI economy, I believe we need to think about a progression from access to capability, from consumption to creation and ownership, and from capability to influence.
From Access to Capability
Digital literacy is important, but the rapid development of AI and other advanced technologies means that participation increasingly requires deeper technical capabilities.
This includes opportunities for women to develop skills in areas such as engineering, artificial intelligence, scientific computing, data science, computational research, and other emerging technologies.
Capability also depends on infrastructure.
Skills cannot develop in isolation from access to computing resources, research environments, laboratories, mentorship, professional communities, and opportunities to experiment and build. If we want more women to participate at the frontiers of technological innovation, access to the environments in which innovation happens is equally important.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply to provide tools, but to create pathways through which women can develop the expertise and confidence to use those tools creatively and productively.
From Consumption to Creation and Ownership
The next transition is from using technology to helping create it.
Africa needs more women participating not only as consumers of digital products but also as scientists, engineers, AI developers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and technology founders.
Creation matters because technological systems are not neutral products emerging independently of human choices. Research priorities, datasets, design decisions, business models, and engineering assumptions all influence what technologies eventually become.
When a wider range of people participate in those processes, we expand the perspectives available for identifying problems and developing solutions that respond to different social, economic, and local realities.
This is particularly important as AI becomes embedded across sectors. African women should have opportunities not simply to adapt to the AI economy, but to contribute to building it.
From Capability to Influence
Technical training alone, however, will not solve the problem.
A woman may acquire advanced digital or scientific skills and still encounter barriers to research funding, investment, commercialisation opportunities, industry partnerships, international networks, or the spaces in which technology and digital-policy decisions are made.
This is why the transition from capability to influence is critical.
We need stronger pathways connecting women with research institutions, industry, entrepreneurship ecosystems, investors, international collaborators, and decision-making networks.
Research commercialisation is particularly important within this conversation. Scientific and technical knowledge can generate far greater societal and economic value when researchers have pathways to translate ideas into technologies, products, services, and enterprises.
The same applies to cross-border networks. Innovation increasingly occurs through collaboration across disciplines, institutions, industries, and countries. Ensuring that African women can participate meaningfully in these networks can broaden access to expertise, infrastructure, markets, partnerships, and opportunities.
What My Own Journey Has Taught Me
My perspective on this question is also informed by my journey as an engineer, scientist, and Founder of AIM²E® Lab & Network.
Through my work in computational science, AI-enabled predictive modelling, and scientific computing, I have seen how technical expertise becomes more powerful when it is connected with broader innovation ecosystems.
Research knowledge is important. But so are the connections that enable knowledge to move: between research and industry, science and entrepreneurship, ideas and investment, and local expertise and international networks.
Building AIM²E® has reinforced for me that participation in advanced technology ecosystems requires more than technical competence. It also requires opportunities to connect research with application, build partnerships, communicate ideas across disciplinary boundaries, and participate in wider innovation and commercialisation conversations.
These experiences shape how I think about digital inclusion.
The objective should not simply be to increase the number of African women using technology. It should also be to expand the number who have meaningful opportunities to research, design, build, commercialise, govern, and influence technology.
Building a Bridge That Leads Somewhere
The theme of the session, The Bridge to the Unconnected, provides a useful way of thinking about the challenge.
A bridge is valuable not simply because it exists, but because of where it enables people to go.
Similarly, connectivity becomes transformative when it opens pathways towards education, technical capability, economic participation, entrepreneurship, leadership, ownership, and influence.
This becomes even more important in conversations around inclusive internet governance, Universal Acceptance, information integrity, and AI-generated disinformation. The communities affected by technological systems should not be positioned only as recipients of decisions made elsewhere. They should also have opportunities to contribute knowledge, perspectives, and leadership to the systems and policies shaping their digital environments.
That requires thinking beyond access.
From Being Connected to Having Agency
I am grateful to Women in Technology in Nigeria (WITIN), the Association of Women in Technology in Nigeria (WITINPro), and the African Women School on Internet Governance for the invitation to contribute to this Digital@UNGA 2026 Affiliate Session, and to my fellow speakers, panellists, and participants for the wider conversation.
The discussion reinforced a question that I believe deserves continued attention as Africa's digital and AI ecosystems develop:
Are African women merely connected, or do they have the power to create, own, and influence what they are connected to?
Closing the digital divide remains essential. But our ambition should extend further: towards building the technical capabilities, research infrastructure, entrepreneurial pathways, investment connections, international networks, and decision-making opportunities that enable women to participate fully in shaping the technologies affecting their communities.
Because the bridge to the unconnected should not end at access. It should lead to agency.
I welcome continued conversations and collaborations around expanding pathways for women in research, AI, DeepTech, entrepreneurship, and technology development across Africa and internationally.
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