HARARE (IPS)�Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will launch an Internet discussion forum in late November that will allow African women to harness information technology as a tool for development.

Known as the Beijing-Plus-Five Women�s Networking Initiative, it forms part of the follow-up process of the UN women�s conference held in the Chinese capital five years ago and will begin operating during the African Regional Conference on Women in Addis Ababa, Nov. 22-27.

"Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) exist within a context of domination and inequality between men and women, youth and adults," said the UN�s Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

"Women already are mar-ginalized in all sectors�access to credit, education, land�and this marginalization expresses itself in all areas of ICTs."

ECA recently convened the first African Development Forum, which brought together political leaders, NGOs and the private sector to develop an African-driven develop-ment agenda.

The Commission says that one of the key development issues confronting Africa is in the area of information technology and, in that area, women remain at the bottom of the pile.

"The real question for us now is how? How will Africa join the global economy?" notes ECA�s Karima Bounemra Ben Soltane.

The African Development Forum, held Oct. 25-29, agreed that more attention was needed to the question of including women in all decision-making processes con-cerning ICT�s. Another issue high on the list should be the development of applications, products and services that respond to the needs of women � for example in the informal sector which is dominated by women.

There also is a desperate need to educate young girls, particularly in the scientific and technical fields, the forum said.

But the challenges to universal access are daunting: many Africans have never even made a phone call, let alone surfed the World Wide Web. There are only about 100,000 dial-up Internet accounts for 750 million people (excluding South Africa).

Internet Service Providers usually are concentrated in the capital cities making an Internet call a costly exercise for the majority who live in rural areas of Africa.

Communications experts point to the major problem of a lack of telephone lines in the continent. If North Africa and South Africa are not counted, there are only about 3 million lines to be shared among 600 million people.

Another gloomy African statistic is that only 2.5 percent of all the world�s television sets are shared among 13 percent of the world�s population.

"In Africa there are about three times as many TV sets as telephone lines," notes professor Heather Hudson of the University of San Francisco. "This ratio indicates that there is a considerable disposable income available to spend on communications, even in low income countries.

"The low computer penetration is likely due, not only to low incomes and lack of electricity but also to low literacy levels."

Fay Chung director of UNESCOs Inter-national Institute for Capacity Building in Africa concurs: "Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from low enrollments at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Africa�s enrollments at tertiary level are the lowest in the world. Moreover women students comprise only a third of the whole."

Net enrollment at primary school level was around 61 percent for boys and 57 percent for girls during the 1993-95 period. At secondary level the situation was worse, with only 9 African countries having achieved secon-dary education for over 50 percent for both sexes.

Despite the odds facing them, African women�s organizations have been some of the proactive players in democratizing access to the information society.