Africa: ECA African Women Conference

Africa Policy E-Journal

Africa: ECA African Women Conference, 1
Date distributed (ymd): 980508
Document reposted by APIC

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Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +gender/women+
Summary Contents:
This posting contains the final press release from the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) 40th anniversary conference, on the theme "African Women and Economic Development: Investing in our Future," held in Addis Ababa from April 28 through May 1. The next posting contains the opening address by ECA Executive Secretary K. Y. Amoako. Additional information on the conference and ECA programs can be found at the ECA web site (http://www.un.org/depts/eca/eca40th). The proceeding of the AFR-FEM Virtual Working Group including more than 400 participants in an on-line discussion preceding the conference can be found at
http://www.globalknowledge.org/english/archives/mailarchives/afr-fem/index.html
(type address on one line). The AFR-FEM recommendations to the conference are in http://www.globalknowledge.org/english/archives/mailarchives/afr-fem/afrfem-apr98/0222.html.
(type address on one line).

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ECA Press Release No. 45

CONFERENCE ENDS ON HIGH NOTE AS AFRICAN LEADERS ENDORSE PUSH FOR WOMEN'S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT

For more information, please visit the Conference Home Page at: http://www.un.org/depts/eca/eca40th

Send an e-mail message to: eca40th@un.org or ecainfo@un.org

Write to:
Conference Secretariat
Economic Commission for Africa
P.O. Box 3001 Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)
Phone: +251-1-51 89 19 (direct)
+251-1-51 72 00 Ext. 33700/33702
Fax: +251-1-51 22 33

Addis Ababa, Friday, May 1 1998

African leaders have added their voice to calls for concrete action to ensure the full and equal participation of women in the continent's economic development.

The calls came at the close of a four-day international conference organized by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) which ended in Addis Ababa today, on the theme "African Women and Economic Development: Investing in our Future".

At a Forum of Heads of state and Government, the leaders -- President Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso, President Festus Mogae of Botswana, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Algeria's Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, Ghana's Vice-President John Atta-Mills, and Uganda's Vice-President Wandira Specioza Kazibwe -- reiterated the need to eradicate poverty in Africa with specific attention to women, who bear the brunt of poverty on the continent.

Also participating in the Forum was United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan -- who is in Ethiopia on the first leg of an 11-day tour of several countries in eastern Africa -- ECA Executive Secretary K. Y. Amoako, and Organization of African Unity (OAU) Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim, who chaired the event.

Vice-president Kazibwe received a standing ovation from the delegates for her intervention, in which she stressed Africa's need to get its priorities right -- beginning with meeting basic requirements like food and shelter -- before addressing what she described as somewhat "esoteric" concerns.

"How can we get into the global village when we have no food, shelter or water? How can you can yourselves men when there is no food in your homes?" she asked. On the subject of information and communication technologies, one of the four themes of the Conference, the Ugandan vice-president argued that while their use and development was important, they would not necessarily solve Africa's problems or even become utilizable as long as basic needs continued to go unfulfilled.

President Mogae identified poverty as being at the root of Africa's problems, adding that poverty had increasingly become feminized.

Prime Minister Zenawi said he supported meaningful affirmative action for Africa's women, as long as it was devoid of tokenism. He exhorted women to be the agents of their own development, telling a panel of African women in the Forum that "in my experience, if you want something you have to take it, no one is going to give it to you." Without ensuring linkages with grassroots women, he insisted, the goal of empowering women would remain utopian.

Earlier, at a consultative meeting held by more than 60 African ministers, ECA's convening power was applauded and the ministers asked that similar meetings be held in future, and if possible institutionalized. The ministers from member states were drawn from a wide range of disciplines, including education, finance, land and agriculture.

They agreed that many of the strategies and actions suggested by participants at the conference could, if implemented, lead to gender equity and as such greater participation of women in economic development and governance.

The ministers remarked that the youth present at the conference demonstrated a concern for their future and a readiness to participate in development activities of their nations.

The Conference, which coincided with the 40th anniversary of ECA, was convened in the context of the mandate of ECA's African Centre for Women (ACW) to support implementation of the global and regional platforms of action aimed at economic and political empowerment of women.

Close to 1,000 people -- among them policy-makers, civil society leaders, NGO representatives, youth, and bilateral partner and UN agency representatives -- took part in the Conference, which emerged with a number of strategic proposals for action, among them:

Including a gender perspective in national accounts and other data;
Establishing partnerships to mainstream gender in key institutions and mechanisms;
Establishing mechanisms to ensure gender-disaggregated national statistics and accounts;
Integrating gender concerns into national budgetary procedures;
Promoting and protecting women's access to and ownership of land in rural and urban areas;
Facilitating women's access to markets and regional trade, and building their entrepreneurial capacity;
Mobilizing resources for the setting up of community social services and insurance programmes to facilitate women's access to basic social services; and
Promoting gender-sensitive credit schemes.

To ensure follow-up and implementation of the Conference outcomes, the organizers are convening tomorrow with some of ECA's partners, in particular NGO actors, to concretize on next steps.

The organizers will seek endorsement of the strategic actions from a larger group of African leaders at the upcoming OAU summit in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in June. In addition, ECA intends to organize a number of sub-regional meetings, to sensitize a wider audience about the Conference outcomes as well as to galvanize local alliances of women into advocacy and lobbying at the national level.

ACW's director Josephine Ouedraogo stressed at a post-Conference briefing for journalists that the strategy for implementation is enshrined in the Centre's mandate. She announced that a group of women's organizations represented at the Conference had pledged a total of US$ 100,000 as seed money to galvanize further fund-raising efforts by ECA and its partners.

On the first day of the Conference, Messrs Salim and Amoako announced the establishment of an African Women's Committee for Peace and Development, with the aim of putting women at the epicentre of conflict resolution and peace-making. ECA and OAU will jointly run the Committee's secretariat, with precise modalities yet to be determined.

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