The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) in collaboration with the Nigeria Internet Governance Forum (NIGF) convened the 2025 Women Internet Governance Forum to advance conversations on women’s participation, visibility, and leadership in digital governance.
The event themed “From Vision to Visibility: Advancing Women’s Leadership in Digital Governance” critically looked at women’s inclusion in in Nigeria’s Digital Governance.
The event featured a keynote address by Professor Nafisat Afolake Adedokun-Shittu, who underscored the need for contextualized digital solutions, stronger local innovation, and enhanced representation of women in national and global digital policy arenas.
Madam Mary Uduma, Chair, West Africa IGF, served as the chair of the forum.
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The technical session featured three speakers and discussed on the topic; Feminist Perspectives on Digital Policy: Rethinking Safety, Privacy, and Online Inclusion
The objectives of the forum were to provide a platform for women leaders in ICT and digital governance to share their experiences, innovations, and leadership journeys; increase awareness of gender gaps in digital access, digital rights, cybersecurity, and internet governance; strengthen partnerships among government, civil society, academia, development partners, and private sector actors working on digital inclusion; To generate practical recommendations for enhancing women’s visibility and leadership in ICT policy and governance spaces.
While the aim was to: promote, strengthen, and amplify women’s leadership, participation, and visibility in digital governance at local, national, and global levels.
Forum , however, Persistent Gender Gaps, as Women continue to be significantly underrepresented in digital governance leadership despite their contributions to ICT, digital innovation, cybersecurity, and AI.
Other challenges the forum identified Structural and Cultural Barriers: Limited digital access, stereotypes, socio-cultural constraints, and online gender-based violence hinder women’s meaningful participation; Low Visibility in Global Digital Policy Spaces: Nigeria, and Nigerian women especially, remain underrepresented in WSIS+20 processes, ITU research clusters, ICANN, and other global governance platforms and Weak Localization of Digital Knowledge: Nigeria relies heavily on foreign digital solutions with insufficient investment in indigenous languages, local content, and context-driven educational and technological innovation.
