APCICT and SPMVV conduct two-day training in Tirupati to equip women entrepreneurs with digital skills

APCICT leads ICT training for socio-economic development in Asia-Pacific, focusing on empowering women entrepreneurs with technology.

Asian and Pacific Training Centre for ICT for Development (APCICT), a unit of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), has been at the forefront in imparting skills to beneficiaries for leveraging Information and Communication and Technology (ICT) to ensure socio-economic development in the Asia and Pacific region.

Kiyoung Ko, the Director of APCICT, participated in the two-day Training of Trainers (ToT) programme conducted by its Indian partner Sri Padmavati Mahila Viswa Vidyalayam (SPMVV) in Tirupati on Friday.

In an exclusive interview with The Hindu, he shared insights on the prevalent gender disparity in these developing regions and the pertinent need to churn out women entrepreneurs. “Most women, though breadwinners, are not in a position to own a mobile phone and have to invariably borrow one from their husband, which is a tough task in a male-dominated society. However, it is heartening to note that the number of women getting acquainted with technology is steadily growing,” he observed.

As technology keeps evolving, the basic version of the Women ICT Frontier Initiatives (WIFI) launched eight years back, has been upgraded as WIFI-DX (DX for Digital Transformation) in the current session, where updated training is imparted to women to help them explore the digital market.

APCICT carefully chooses trainees by tying up with ministries, universities, labour unions and non-governmental organisations; SPMVV is the lone university in India to be associated with the unit for this prorgramme. “As of today, we have our training programme in 22 countries in the region,” Mr. Ko noted.

As opposed to women using high-end and low-end technologies, the spectrum of those in the mid-segment is quite large, thus, Mr. Ko lays emphasis on this set of entrepreneurs using middle level technologies. “As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is catching up, we are planning to introduce WIFI-AX in the next two years, to disseminate knowledge to ensure AI-based transformation”, he said.