"Digital technology is an essential tool for bringing citizens closer to their institutions, but also for offering new opportunities to women."

In Mali, the technology sector is undergoing rapid transformation. And women no longer intend to be left behind.
Increasingly interested in coding, cybersecurity, and Civic Tech, they are benefiting from the rise of programs dedicated to women's digital inclusion.

The Malian government, supported by partners, is focusing on training and digital entrepreneurship to reduce inequalities.
Initiatives like Women Tech Mali enable young women to learn to code, create applications, and lead digital projects.

For Cissé Hawa Coulibaly, director of operations at the Tuwindi organization, " digital technology is an essential lever for bringing citizens closer to their institutions, but also for offering new opportunities to women ."

 

Progress has been made, but inequalities persist.

While efforts to promote women's digital inclusion are beginning to bear fruit, female participation in tech in Mali remains largely marginal.
According to UNESCO (2023), only 37% of girls complete secondary school, compared to 45% of boys, limiting their access to technology fields. At USTTB, they represent less than 15% of students in computer science and engineering.

These still modest advances are hampered by numerous obstacles, both structural, economic, and socio-cultural.
The foremost of these is access to financing. In Africa, women-led startups received only 1.5% of the funds raised between 2019 and 2023.

This means in concrete terms that even when they have ideas, skills and motivation, women entrepreneurs encounter far more difficulties in obtaining the means to make them a reality.

Another major obstacle is digital connectivity. In 2023, only 30% of Malians had internet access, with significant disparities between urban and rural areas. This lack of digital infrastructure disproportionately affects rural women, who face multiple forms of exclusion: social, economic, geographic, and technological.

In addition to this, there are heavy cultural norms. Even when they gain access to training, they are often discouraged by those around them, or confronted with male-dominated environments that are not very inclusive.

Therefore, it is a whole ecosystem of support, trust and experimentation that needs to be built to enable women to take their place in the digital world not only as beneficiaries, but as full-fledged actors.

  

A digital revolution with a female face

Despite these obstacles, many women refuse to be relegated to a secondary role.
They create, train, and innovate. Some, like Nathalie Sidibé, founder of Women In Tech Mali , are fighting to make tech more inclusive.
Others are investing in unexpected fields: artificial intelligence, data, civic tech, and digital education. For example, Sogoba Jacqueline Konaté is the director of the National Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Increasingly, they are proving that women's creativity can transform digital practices into genuine economic and social opportunities.

Other African countries have made digital inclusion a national priority.
Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria have implemented ambitious policies to support girls from secondary school onward.
Women's support groups, often created on WhatsApp, allow women to exchange contacts, advice, and opportunities.

“ In Ghana, it has even become a state policy. Young girls are introduced to digital professions at a very early age. Mali can draw inspiration from this ,” says Cissé Hawa Coulibaly. These initiatives show that digital inclusion is not just a gender issue: it is a development strategy.

 

Because beyond the numbers, what is at stake today is a silent revolution, led by women determined to change their destiny and to actively participate in the construction of digital Mali.

 

Article rédigé par Abdoussalam DICKO