Empowerment in their hands: use of WhatsApp by women in Nigeria

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are reported to hold a lot of promise for sustainable development, poverty reduction, and the empowerment of marginalized groups, such as women and minorities in developing countries. This article discusses the relationship between women’s empowerment and ICTs, by investigating the promise of empowerment associated with the use of WhatsApp by women in Nigeria. It draws upon Sen’s Capability Approach (CA) to explore some implications of the use of WhatsApp mobile application on human development. We employed Sen’s five instrumental freedoms to evaluate how WhatsApp has empowered women by concentrating on the opportunities provided for expanding their freedom to participate in social, economic, and political activities. Our analysis shows that WhatsApp can contribute to the empowerment of women by enabling their freedoms to participate in developmental activities; however, some contextual factors impede the ability of the women to take full advantage of these developmental opportunities that WhatsApp offers. The article concludes with some implications for policymakers advancing an agenda for ‘ICTs for Development’.