African Women’s Empowerment and Environmental Sustainability in the Digital Age: Implications, Challenges and Opportunities

Climate change is a global phenomenon impacting all global citizens, but its effects are being sculptured by prevalent and deep-rooted gender inequality. Out of all the global continents, Africa is the most severely affected by climate change with ninety percent most vulnerable countries found in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper therefore explores how digitally empowering African women would promote environmental sustainability to reduce the devastating impacts of climate change. One of the results of climate change is global warming which has caused multitudes of people around the globe to suffer from natural disasters, hunger, poverty, unemployment, life-threatening diseases, as well as biodiversity destruction, among other challenges. The United Nations came up with sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a panacea to the environmental challenges as well as advancing the global socio-economic development. In the recent past the pursuit for gender equality and the need for a clean and safe environment prompted researchers to explore the fundamental relationship between women empowerment and environmental sustainability. Significant progress on the socioeconomic and political women empowerment has been recorded in Africa and has seen an increase in women entrepreneurs and women political leaders. However, with the majority of African women interacting with the environment directly to eke a living, digitally empowering them would also advance environmental sustainability.