Source: BusinessDay
Speaking in Pretoria, Machel was encouraging 10 women who made it to the final phase of training and mentoring project for businesswomen, funded by the Spanish government

Graca Machel, president of the Foundation for Community development of South Africa said the most important revolution that African women have to get involved in is the economic one.

Speaking to media in Pretoria, she said was a small start on a big idea.

"African business women need to get access to assets, to lead their own business and to reap the results of those businesses. This may seem a small group, but it is part of the web, it is a bigger, bigger web in which we envisage and we encourage women that in the next 10 to 15 years if there is one fundamental social change which has to take place in our continent it is precisely women controlling wealth, leading business and having their voice and aspirations heard at the table of the big discussions of the big business," Machel told a gathering of business women in Pretoria.

She was lending her support to 10 women who made it to the final phase of training and mentoring project for businesswomen, funded by the Spanish government.

The women were all from post-conflict countries, such as South Africa, Liberia, Rwanda and Mozambique

But she told them that they have to dream big with their projects

"You have to implement big, you have to become big and with no hesitation, with no any kind of feeling inferior to sit down in the table in your respective countries to negotiate what is the policy of the economic development," She said.

Machel also said women have to be agents and builders of peace in their respective countries.

She said: Women have to be able to negotiate at the table of negotiations, to participate in the drafting of the constitution and to participate in the drafting of the electoral system. No one will succeed without us. Nothing about us without us."

 

• South Africa