By Daniel Tyokua
The minister of state for FCT , Dr. Ramatu Tijjani Aliyu, has asked African women to champion ideas that will rebuild countries’ economies, values and future, describing them as born managers of resources.
During a virtual ongoing African Women Conference (AWC) on Thursday in Kigali, Rwanda, she said that women were mostly affected at the peak of COVID-19 pandemic even as she said they have the core responsibility of ensuring the well-being of members of their homes and communities.
The minister lamented that the continuous under representation of women in the public space, in both elective and political appointments, has been the single most-important factor hampering the availability of economic opportunities.
In her words, “we must work to ensure women are at the forefront of leading the economic growth Africa desires, be part of policy making and implementation, and women should work towards the agenda of gender and social inclusion policy to protect women and female children in our various countries.
“The development and growth of a nation would only be achievable when women are equal partners in growth with men. The current reality is that in most African countries, women have relatively weak socioeconomic status and their successful empowerment must necessarily connect and feed their labour into the flow of economic development.
“Asides the negative impact on their economic status, women also have had to grapple with all forms of Gender-Based Violence: for illustration, increased domestic abuse, sexual harassment, rape, amongst others, were reported during the lockdown”.
The minister who argued that given the population and innate potential of women in contributing to the political and socio-economic development of any country, it behoves on the state to map out workable strategies that would ensure the effective empowerment of women at all levels, noting that doing so, would enable the womenfolk to maximize their potentialities and further help consolidate the gains that contemporary democratic opening provides especially in the post COVID-19 era.
This year’s African Women Conference has the theme: “Women’s Participation in Building An Inclusive and Sustainable Post COVID-19 Economy”.
