Source: African Women Leaders' Network
In 2010, with support from AFP and the Packard Foundation, AWLN was launched to provide a platform for strong women champions who are informed and persuasive to advocate for funds and policies for family planning commodities and services to be made available to all women.
Now, four years later, the Network Each AWLN Member has made significant progress in her own capacity. Personal achievements over the past year include;
- Nyaradzai Gumbodzvanda (Zimbabwe)who was nominated as the AU Goodwill Ambassador for ending child marriage;
- Phindile Sithole-Spong (South Africa) who was named one of Mail & Guardian’s 200 most influential young South Africans (in health), and
- Jane Kiragu (Kenya) was appointed as an advisor on the first lady’s Beyond Zero campaign for maternal health, and a member of the FP2020 reference group
The Kenya National Council for Population and Development Director General Dr. Josephine Kibaru-Mbae attended the convening held from 20th to 22nd August 2014 in Nairobi. She expressed the challenge that arises from only 13% of the Kenya’s average county budgets being allocated to health
“How many of us in the room have not dealt with teenage sexuality or pregnancy issues?” she asked, “and how many young women have died in our hands due to unsafe abortions, lack of family planning information and services?”
Dr. Kibaru-Mbae expressed that advocates cannot afford to leave these issues to others to discuss and deal with. Eastern Africa is one of the most dangerous subregions in the world in which to have an abortion: approximately one in five maternal deaths can be attributed to unsafe abortion. These deaths can be prevented by ensuring access to family planning information, services and information for all women.
Phase 2 of AFP has as its primary focus the fulfilment of the goal of the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning and its successor FP2020; to ensure that an additional 120 million women in the world’s poorest countries have access to lifesaving family planning information, services and supplies by 2020. Working with AFP, AWLN has committed to:
- Continue to strengthen and maximize the advocacy skills and knowledge of champions and support them in their efforts to work effectively with governments, donors and other policymakers to fulfil FP2020 commitments.
- Facilitate the high–level involvement of the network as a whole and through individual members in pivotal policy dialogues (FP2020, succeeding dialogues to the International Conference on Population and Development and Millennium Development Goals, relevant opportunities with the African Union, national and regional processes relating to maternal health, reproductive health and rights, and family planning).
- Advocate for supportive policy promoting greater access to rights-based family planning at global, regional, national and sub-national levels with emphasis on working with existing AFP country partners to implement joint advocacy activities.
Zimbabwean AWLN member and African Union Goodwill Ambassador for the campaign to end child marriage, Nayaradzayi Gumbodzvanda was among the convening participants. She took the opportunity to share the reproductive health and fundamental rights abuses that child brides face.
“39,000 girls are married off every day,” Nyaradzayi explained, “and seventy per cent of these are in Africa.”
The members have set country-level targets to achieve over the coming year. For example, AWLN Burkina Faso will focus on influencing 10 out of 351 communities by advocating for mayors to prioritize family planning in their budgets.
The Network today celebrates a number of successes. Over the past year, AWLN’s visibility has increased as a result of engagement with the WHO, the UN Commission on Information and Accountability for Women and Children’s Health, the AU, regional parliamentary networks, the Organisation of African First Ladies (OAFLA) and a number of other national, regional and international initiatives all aimed at ensuring that African governments increased funding for and provided the necessary favourable environment for universal access to reproductive health and family planning services and commodities.
