The Mediterranean Women Digital Summit is a yearly platform for outstanding women activists and entrepreneurs leading the digital transformation of their countries’ economies and societies. This year’s edition paid particular attention to social innovations as a means to lead the Southern Mediterranean to more sustainable and inclusive development. While digital innovations are expected to be above all technologically innovative, the Mediterranean Women Digital Summit addressed the importance that innovation must first benefit the entire community without creating collateral damages and benefiting a particular group.
This two-day summit constituted a great opportunity for 70 participants from the broader Mediterranean region and Europe including Algeria, the Arab Emirates, Austria, Egypt, Germany, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, the Netherlands, Turkey and Tunisia to discover innovative initiatives that illustrate the progress the Southern Mediterranean can experience in different sectors such as education, health or entrepreneurship. On a more institutional level, the intervention of representatives from UN agencies such as ITU and UNESCO underlined the relevance of the Sustainable Development Goals as a relevant framework for supporting digital social innovation and women empowerment in the region.
Through a peer-to-peer consulting session, seven selected young entrepreneurs benefited from the sharp eyes of our senior invited entrepreneurs who discussed and criticized several promising projects. Finally, as last year, the outcome of the summit has been summarized in a Joint Declaration in which our participants listed a series of commitments supporting digital social innovation and women empowerment for the region.
