Gender & Protection in East Africa

On July 2, First Ladies from nations across Africa joined First Lady Michelle Obama, President George W. Bush, Laura Bush and distinguished leaders in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, for a two-day summit, entitled "Investing in Women: Strengthening Africa." The event will focus on strategies for advancing opportunities for African women.

Research confirms that when women have access to the right tools, training and opportunities, they act as catalysts for broader economic and social advancement. As the African proverb so wisely states, "When women move forward, the world moves with them."

However, we know that development issues are complex and require cross-sector collaboration to address them. Unlocking the extraordinary potential of women in low-income countries will require ambitious collaborations between governments, businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

Consider the challenges faced by women farmers in the developing world. According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, many of these women lack access to the financing, land, education and technology available to men.

The UN reports that eliminating this one gender disparity would increase food production by as much as four percent in developing countries, and pull upwards of 150 million people out of hunger1. Such gains would be particularly beneficial for many African nations, where explosive population growth poses one threat to the continent's food supply2.

Developing countries also prosper when women are empowered to take charge of their finances and become involved in their economies. The World Bank published a series of major studies highlighting gender equality as a critical foundation for development investment. Their reports note that investments in women and girls strengthen countries' ability to grow their GDP and reduce poverty.

The founder of Victoria Seeds, Uganda's leading seed company, which caters to smallholder farmers and exports to South Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is no shrinking violet.

The day before visiting the Guardian, Okot spoke on a panel at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) to discuss two reports on linking smallholders to markets in Africa. Despite having flown in only that morning, Okot was a lively and forceful presence on the panel, befitting an entrepreneur who has won awards including a Africa Award for Entrepreneurship in 2011.

Okot founded her company in 2004, at a time when commercial banks considered agricultural investments to be too risky. She only succeeded in securing start-up capital because of a guarantee from a USAid project. Victoria Seeds has grown into a business with a $2.5m turnover, employing 140 people. More than 900 farmers, mostly women, grow seeds for the company. It markets more than 95 varieties of cereal, legume, vegetable, oil, horticultural and forage crops. The company disseminates seeds across Uganda through more than 400 agro-dealer outlets.

In her interview in the Guardian's hushed atmosphere and during her appearance at the ODI, Okot bemoaned Africa's farmers' lack of productivity and their reliance on rudimentary tools. "The hand-held hoe should no longer be a tool of production, it is an embarrassment that it still is," she says.

Okot laments the lack of agricultural extension services – the provision of training and advice to smallholders. The absence of advice and good seeds account for crop yields in Uganda that reach only a third of their potential, she says.

Reducing gender inequity will require a wide range of policies. This column describes a framework for quantifying the growth effects of gender policies in developing economies and, by applying an overlapping generations model to Brazil, shows that gender policy is likely to produce tangible economic results, but only in the long term.

[The] approach calibrates the steady-state solution of the model – based on rigorous microfoundations and which possesses well-defined long-run properties – and focuses on the long-run effects of gender-based policies. Many of these policies are structural in nature and are likely to produce tangible economic results but only over a period of several years. While the model described here may not provide complete versatility, it does represent a significant analytical step forward in an area where there is a dearth of quantitative tools available for policy analysis.

The effective and meaningful participation of women in policymaking, programming and implementation is crucial to increasing success in all phases of disaster risk management. This participation, combined with timely and adequate attention to the gender aspects of disasters and climate change, can in turn lead to greater gender equality and strengthen the resilience of entire communities.

[Tanzanian] President Jakaya Kikwete opened the African First Ladies Summit in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday commenting on how women in Africa do most of the work but often get much less for their sweat and toil than what lands in the hands of men.

The issue he was shedding light on was as serious at the summit as it has always been – and this is that women do most of the labour but their work is not adequately appreciated.

Women constitute the majority of the 80 per cent of the farming population in Tanzania, most of whom live in underserved rural areas. In that agriculture is the backbone of the economy, it is only fair to say they deserve a pat on the back for easily standing as the drivers of the country’s economy.

Unfortunately, despite global meetings echoing the importance of empowering women, most deliberations usually end on paper and little is done to improve women’s lives. While being the major producers, most women engaged in agriculture are smallholders making do with the hoe.

All this is despite our having put in place institutions that are supposed to provide loans to farmers as a way of improving their lives...

There are some 600,000 Somali refugees in Kenya, according to government figures, more than two thirds of whom live in the sprawling, 20-year-old Dadaab complex in the east of the country...

...The current situation on the ground in Somalia definitely does not allow for a mass repatriation of refugees. Certainly, there are areas in Somalia that are becoming safer and secure, but the stability is fragile...

...UNHCR's position - as elsewhere around the world - is that refugees should make informed decisions about whether to return home and should return home voluntarily in safety and dignity...

So far this year, 17,000 Somali refugees living in Kenya returned to Somalia, according to UNHCR, which pointed out that some of them may have done so only temporarily, for example to plant crops.

BLOG

...Young African women are at the receiving end of harmful traditional practices such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and girl-pledging which take away their autonomy and imperil their health. These practices put them at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, and are partly why the complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death of women aged 15-19 in Africa.

Practices such as child marriage leave girls vulnerable to violence, too, with child brides more at risk of domestic and sexual abuse than their unmarried peers...

...I believe it is our role as young Africans to pressure our leaders to turn these discussions into concrete action plans that secure the health of African mothers. In my view, the most important aspect needing intervention is child marriage, which is key to reducing maternal mortality and violence against girls and women...

...Day of the African Child offers the opportunity for African leaders to state their commitment to address child marriage and other practices that have harmful consequences for children across Africa. A great place to start would be for African leaders to commit to enacting and enforcing laws on a minimum age of marriage.

Every year, approximately 200 million people around the world are affected by disasters. Of these, 100 million are women or girls, according to the UN’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

Yet while the UN General Assembly endorsed in 2005 the Hyogo Framework of Action (HFA) - a 10-year plan to make the world safer from natural hazards, which calls for gender perspectives to be integrated into disaster programmes - most countries currently still lack such gender-sensitive policies.

The latest reports on the HFA’s progress showed that, in the period from 2009 to 2011, 62 out of 70 countries consulted did not collect gender-disaggregated information on disaster vulnerability and capacity.