Nancy Hafkin

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Nancy Hafkin (2013)

Nancy J. Hafkin (born 1942 ) is an American historian who has dedicated herself to digital networking and communication for more than four decades. On behalf of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) , she has done a great job building the ICT framework on the African continent and promoting women in this area.

In 2012 she was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society . The Nancy Hafkin Prize, named after her, for innovation in information technology in Africa has been honoring outstanding initiatives for the use of information and communication technology (ICT) every year since 2000 .

Live and act

Nancy Hafkin comes from a matriarchal family, in which women had been the head of the family for three generations. She grew up with a sister, which later led Hafkin to comment, "There weren't many ways that the girls in our family were treated second class."

Hafkin studied history and anthropology at Brandeis University in Boston from 1960 to 1965 . She then studied from 1965 to 1967 at Boston University . In her history major, she found a mentor in Professor Ruth Morgenthau who encouraged her to study African history intensively in her graduate studies from 1967 to 1973. It was a young field in which many women were active. Hafkin received his doctorate with a thesis on "Trade, Society and Politics in Northern Mozambique from 1753-1913" .

From 1969 onwards, Hafkin lectured at Boston State College, teaching African history, African literature, and women in global culture and history.

In 1975 she moved with her husband to Ethiopia and from September 1976 worked for almost 25 years in Addis Ababa in strategically and developmentally important functions, initially for the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) as head of the Research Program for Women and Development (ATRCW), the world's first international women's and development program. She later worked as the founder and head of the Pan-African Development Information System (PADIS). The program worked to establish the first electronic communications networks in a number of African countries and went on to convince African governments of the importance of the Internet.

Through her work, Hafkin has made a significant contribution to raising global awareness of developments in the context of gender and information technology as well as enabling fast and inexpensive access to information technology and thus information and networking on the African continent. The prerequisites for this have been created with PADIS. According to Hafkin, "networking means an end to isolation and access to resources".

In addition to her work, she taught as a visiting professor at the University of Addis Ababa at the Chair of History from 1980–1981 .

In 2000, Hafkin returned to the United States with her husband. After leaving the UN, Hafkin turned her attention to improving women’s internet access, an issue that has preoccupied her since her early days as a researcher.

Since her retirement , Hafkin has continued to act as a keynote speaker and gives lectures on the empowerment and participation of women in IT.

Private

Nancy Hafkin has been a widow since 2003. She met her husband Berhanu Abebe, who came from Ethiopia, while studying in Boston. They have a son and a daughter together. Hafkin lives in Boston and still has a residence in Ethiopia.

Awards and honors

The National Computer Museum of the United Kingdom in Bletchley is in the Department women in computer science a portrait of Nancy Hafkin out to girls and young women to inspire a career in computer science.

Publications (selection)

Books

  • Edna G. Bay, Nancy J. Hafkin: Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change. Stanford University Press, Redford 1976, ISBN 978-08-0471011-4 .
  • Nancy J. Hafkin, Gert Nulens (Eds.): Digital Divide in Developing Countries: An Information Society in Africa. Academic and Scientific Publishers, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-9-054-87310-5 .
  • Nancy J. Hafkin, Sophia Huyer: Cinderella or Cyberella: Empowering Women in the Knowledge Society. Kumarian Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1-565-49219-6 .

Technical article

  • Nancy Hafkin, Gideon S. Were, Derek A. Wilson: East Africa through a Thousand Years. A History of the Years AD 1000 to the Present Day. 1987
  • Gender, Information Technology, and Developing Countries: An Analytic Study. 2001
  • The African Information Society Initiative: A Seven-year Assessment (1996-2002). 2002
  • "Whatsupoch" on the Net: The Role of Information and Communication Technology in the Shaping of Transnational Ethiopian Identity. 2006
  • Gender, ICTs and agriculture. A situation analysis for the 5th Consultative Expert Meeting of CTA's ICT Observatory meeting on gender and agriculture in the information society. 2007
  • Women & ICT: Education and Employment Issues and Opportunities in Developing Countries. 2007
  • From the village school to the globe: Overcoming social barriers in teaching and learning with ICT in Africa. 2009
  • Measuring ICT and Gender: An assessment . 2014
  • a21 for Gender Equality . 2017
  • Factors Influencing Women's Ability to Enter the Information Technology Workforce: Case Studies of Five Sub-Saharan African Countries. 2019

Web links

Commons : Nancy Hafkin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dr Nancy Hafkin. Gender Summit GS8, 2016, accessed on June 16, 2020 .
  2. ^ A b Augustina Fazio: Nancy Hafkin interviewed by APC. Association for Progressive Communications, June 18, 2012, accessed June 16, 2020 .
  3. ^ Trade, society, and politics in northern Mozambique, c. 1753-1913 - Nancy J. Hafkin. Retrieved June 16, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Biography Nancy Hafkin. Internet Hall of Fame, accessed June 16, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Sarah Mitroff: Nancy Hafkin Brought Internet to Africa. Now She's Tackling Tech Gender Divide. Wired, July 2, 2012, accessed June 16, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Nancy Hafkin's Internet Hall of Fame. In: Open Transcripts. 2012, accessed on June 16, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Nancy Hafkin. Internet Hall of Fame, 2012, accessed June 16, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Wende Cover: On International Women's Day. Thoughts on Gender and STEM. TechCrunch, March 9, 2015, accessed June 16, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Hafkin, Nancy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hafkin, Nancy J.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian and ICT specialist
DATE OF BIRTH 1942