LEADERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE AREA

Fostering female empowerment through leadership and governance training is a very effective way to attain all aspects of development. Women produce between 60% and 80% of foodstuffs from developing countries and half of those from around the world (FAO). However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, women have very little control over the resources for production such as capital and land (85% of landowners are men). Often, women devote most of their time to informal, undervalued activities, and their access to essential institutions like courts and markets is very limited.

Great efforts have therefore been made at different levels (continental, regional, state, etc.) to make progress in the empowerment of women:

On 25 October 2018, for the first time the Ethiopian Parliament elected a woman, Sahle-Work Zewde, as their head of state: “If you thought I spoke a lot about women, know that I am just getting started.” In total, out of the twenty countries with the most women in parliaments, six are African: Rwanda, Namibia, South Africa, Senegal, Mozambique and Ethiopia. Not only that, but in the last decade, the number of African women in ministerial posts has tripled. They now account for 22.5% of parliamentary seats—a percentage similar to the one in Europe (23.5%) and higher than in the US (18%).

Women from 54 countries in Africa attended the 2019 Women Deliver Conference in Canada, the world’s largest conference on gender equality, health, rights and the well-being of girls and women. At the conference, headed by President Sahle-Work Zewde, women spoke countless times about the importance of gender equality.

In the full text of the final declaration by the G20 in Osaka, held this year, to which 20 non-specific documents are attached, we can find a document that mentions the empowerment of women, specifying the importance of achieving gender equality in order to achieve economic, sustainable and inclusive growth. The important thing to note is the commitment to ongoing implementation of the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) in support of women’s entrepreneurship in developing countries such as those in Africa.

Elsewhere, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in October 2018 to Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist and activist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving a boost to the fight against sexual violence.

Before that, in 2010, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its Human Development Report introduced the Gender Inequality Index, which has formally been included since 2014. Africa, like other continents, is a land of contrasts, but also of patterns: with all its complexity and diversity, Sub-Saharan Africa is at the top of the Gender Inequality Index, with an average of 0.569 in 2017 (the world average is 0.441).

Even so, it remains a challenge for female representation to have a positive impact on women’s daily lives.

Projects