Arulogun Ehin is a community in Lagelu Local Government Area in Oyo State, Southwestern Nigeria is a typical rural community and consists of 20 hamlets. Arulogun is not just a rural area; it is continuously ‘ruralising’ in a manner that possibly suggests that the community might not be in existence in the next few decades, as people move to the city. The community lacks all the modern amenities –there is no running water or electricity and road access is extremely poor for this farming community. Lack of ICT skill and facilities in the community means that Arulogun and its dwellers are disconnected from potential buyers of their produce and higher income for the community. Generally, the level of socio-economic activities in the community is very poor and people living in the community are predominantly illiterate and poor. An ICT project in Arulogun would require literate people to intermediate between buyers and producers. It was this realisation that led to the introduction of school teachers as agents of change.
Achievements
The first achievement is the success in winning the support of the village head (Baale) and his council of chiefs of the need for a community resource centre in the village. This ensured that the entire community would be willing to take part in the project, and benefit from it thereafter. The cooperation of the Baale also means that our presence in the community is not a threat to anyone. In respect to strong gender based structures, which do not favour women in the community, the acceptance of our project means that we have sort of broken what could be considered a significant gender rubicund. Five female teachers, five community women and five male teachers have successfully completed the ICT training and have acquired sufficient efficacy to intermediate between the rural women farmers and the city buyers.
Gender issues and challenges
We also largely successfully mobilised the community women, but implementing a project for women in Arulogun without involving their men is totally unthinkable. The five consultations with the Baale and his chiefs in council excluded women, despite clear indication in our presentations that the project was focused on women. The community leaders made it very clear to us that deciding the nature and extent of involvement of the women in the project, and in fact in any project in the community, was in the best interest of the women. They also decided that more men than women would be required to take part both in the training and implementation of the projects, all in the interest of the women. This very strong glass ceiling inhibited our interaction with the women at the early stage of the project, and limited the involvement of women and their opinions in the project. Pregnant women and nursing mothers were also automatically excluded, due to the high infant mortality rate in the community.
But women themselves were also unwilling to participate, except with the full consent and permission of the elders. Women who eventually indicated interest to participate in the project also requested that issues about women’s empowerment be downplayed, in order to ensure the smooth flow of the project.
Other than three of the six female teachers in the Saint James primary school who had handsets, none of the women farmers owned or had access to mobile phones. We were even initially advised not to give mobile phones to women or teach them how to use them as this could be misinterpreted by their husbands as a ploy to lure them out of their marital homes, or make them wild. One of the major explanations for this practice is that the men needed the women as hands in the farms, both to cultivate, care for the farms, process the products and carry them to the markets and sell them for their husbands. ‘Opening’ the eyes of these women could make them run to the cities in search of more improved livelihood, or run to other men who are economically better off.
An observation that translates to ICT and gender issue is that while some of the men had some education, all the women we encountered did not have any form of modern education. This limitation not only inhibited the women from using ICT, the women were just incapable of doing so.
Community mobilisation and sustainability
Given these obstacles, we needed to be strategic in order to gain the support form the community. While the training is aimed for selected persons, we considered how to mobilise the women without infringing on the culture of the community which we had known had the capability of stopping our project implementation. Our first mobilization was the consultation with the Baale and his Chiefs in Council on our need to mobilize the women. This we did to ensure that our project had legitimacy in the community, forestalling any hindrances from any of the villages and their leaders as well as securing the support of the other leaders of the land, and make our mission clear to the people in the community.
- We have already entered into a discussion with the community Anglican church, St James, on how to use the instrument of the organization to continue the project after the project life has expired. To make this possible, two of the community women involved in the training activities were members of the church.
- We have also initiated contacts with prominent members of the community who live in the cities for further assistance. Although not much has been achieved in this regard, we will pay some great attention on this component in second tranche of the project.
