Source: IPS News
Barbara Kemigisa used to call herself an "HIV/AIDS campaigner". These days she would rather be known as an "HIV/AIDS family planning campaigner". "We need to reduce unplanned pregnancies and the HIV infection rate in our country," Kemigisa told IPS during Uganda's first national family planning conference on July 28. "It's about dual protection."
Source: Huffington Post
The Obama administration is pushing for greater U.S. investment in Africa. But the great African summit, held in Washington recently, was largely theater; necessary and important, but still a work of fiction.
Source: The Guardian
Sudanese women contribute greatly to their communities during war, but they have been left out of the formal peace process
Source: IPS News
Growing up with five brothers, soccer-mad Majidah Nantanda had half a team to compete against at home in Makindye, a suburb in Uganda's capital, Kampala. But at her school, in the 1990s, there were two sports rules: "Netball for the girls and football for the boys," recalls the 32-year-old, as she stands on the sidelines of a boy's game in Makindye.
Source: Daily News
A coalition of groups advocating for women's rights said Monday it is necessary to include women in the upcoming governor reshuffle after a minister said women would only be appointed as "deputies and assistants".
Source: Peace FM
The Ark foundation Ghana, an advocacy-based Women's Rights Non-governmental Organization whose primary purpose is to seek the promotion and protection of the rights of women and children has embarked on Young Urban Women's Project to create awareness on the need for young women in the Urban Communities to be economic independent.
Source: SA News
Home Affairs Deputy Minister Fatima Chohan says the underrepresentation of women in social, political and economic spheres must be addressed if Africa is to develop fully.
Source: Leadership Nigeria The Centre for Promotion of Ethics, Values and National Integration (CENPEVNI), has said that it has secured admission for the 57 escaped Chibok school girls from a school in the United States of America (USA), through its collaboration with other groups.
Source: Spy Ghana Connected Development [CODE] with support from the New Venture Fund through the development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC) brought together Seventeen (17) young women from different spheres of life in Abuja to build their capacities in identifying issues faced when overcoming barriers to girl child education in Nigeria.
Source: Al Jazeera After Kouame Koffi's daughter Grace was born in 2008, he swore he would not have any more children. Koffi's wife, Odette, had given birth twice before, in their one-room home in N'Dakro, a remote village about three hours outside of Abidjan, the economic capital of Cote d'Ivoire.
Source: Spy Ghana The Second Lady of Republic of Ghana Her Excellency Mrs. Matilda Amissah – Arthur has admonished the youth to abstain from pre-marital sex in order to avoid unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Source: GhanaWeb More than 100 basic school girls from the East Akyem and Akuapem North Municipalities in the Eastern Region have been trained in Adolescence Reproductive Health issues at a Camp, organised Plan Ghana.
Source: Zambia Daily Mail Education is very important for every child whether boy or girl. It is, therefore, sad that some communities still discriminate against the education of the girl-child.
Source: SpyGhana
A research finding from a study of girls’ sexual relations outcomes in Accra suggest that the Ghana’s Reproductive Policy adopted in 2000 may not be sufficient in addressing the reproductive health of young girls.
Source: Huffington Post
The Obama administration is pushing for greater U.S. investment in Africa. But the great African summit, held in Washington recently, was largely theater; necessary and important, but still a work of fiction.
If you knew nothing about the subject, you might think that U.S. business, in an extraordinary historical oversight, has overlooked opportunity-rich Africa. Actually, America's trade with Africa has been in free fall since 2008. China's trade with Africa is reaching new heights every year, including this one. It more than doubles ours now.
For a decade, Africa -- nearly all of its 54 countries -- has looked east, and China has seized the opening. Yet the Chinese presence in Africa hasn't helped its underlying problems. Instead, it has put money in the pockets of the ruling elites and has turned a blind eye to the excesses of those elites.
China's interest in Africa, brilliantly and cynically exploited, has been in raw materials. A theme at last week's Washington summit was that there was something wrong with exploiting raw materials, and that value-added manufacturing -- which creates real wealth and real jobs -- could just be wished into being with more investment dollars.
China has flooded the continent with its lowest-quality exports - goods that wouldn't make it onto the shelves of Walmart -- and has even cheated the Africans out of the best jobs that its raw materials-hungry policy has created by bringing in Chinese workers.
The Africans get even less out of the Chinese colonization, by another name, than it did out of the European version in the "scramble for Africa" in the last decades of the 19th century. But the elites are allowed a free hand with their kleptocracy, their human rights violations and their indifference to the condition of their own people. This sets up an asymmetrical competition with Western laws against bribery, fair trade practices and the fact that American and international companies cannot be directed to serve a political purpose by their home governments.
President Obama made a good, even a great start, before the summit when he called for an end to the bad old ways of Africa. But his words were not echoed by the delegates.
The long-term future of Africa lies in fundamental reforms within its social and political structures -- and one in particular: its attitude toward women. If you spend any time there, two things are apparent: women have a raw deal, yet they -- not the oil or the chrome or the copper, but the used and abused women of Africa -- are its future.
Women hold Africa together and suffer in silence. They are the ones bent over with primitive implements in the fields, inevitably with their latest infant strapped to their backs. They are the ones who must endure marriage during puberty, bear children before their bodies are fully formed and face the world's highest rates of death during childbirth.
In shiny office buildings in Accra or Lusaka, it is the women who are moving the work forward. If you need something done, from a permit to an airline reservation, seek out a woman in an office. However, very few women make it to those prized jobs.
On the farms in Africa, it is the women who have managed small cooperatives, mastered micro-credit and provide family life. But they still must bend over their budzas with their youngest child strapped to their backs. The budza is a kind of hoe used for weeding, tilling and sowing. In its way, it is also a symbol of female enslavement; light enough for a woman to use all day long.
The women of Africa need to be told often and in every way they are special. They need to know that they have value beyond sex and work; that they are not an inferior gender, that they are the future.
The summit touched, in passing, on the talent and the plight women, as the male leaders talked the talk of international good intentions. But the women of Africa need recognition. Give them the tools of education and opportunity and they will do the job.
The budza needs to be retired, as does the culture of female enslavement of which it is the symbol.
Source: Institute for Inclusive Security
Although quotas can be a powerful tool for elevating more women to political office, they can also function as a glass ceiling, with representation typically not surpassing the number that is required by law. Quotas also don’t necessarily equal substantive and meaningful participation. So how do we move beyond mere numbers?
Source: The Economist
ZEINABOU Moussa is but a girl, flat-chested, soft-skinned and shy. Yet at just 16 she has seen more of marriage than she would like. Earlier this year, having been beaten and bullied into wedding a stranger, she took a stand.
Source: On Islam
Rural Muslim communities in Malawi have intensified efforts to reduce rising cases of early marriages among girls to champion the promotion of the education for the girl child, which is said to have suffered much neglect.
Source: Swazi Observer
Despite the promising rapid economic growth in Swaziland, gender disparities in women’s economic participation have remained deep and persistent in the country.
Source: The Guardian
Esther Worae believes a key part of her job is to preach the message of contraception. Along with her team from the Marie Stopes clinic in Accra, she goes to places that attract a crowd – the beach, the marketplace – to talk to people about the value of family planning, the dangers of early marriage and the importance of women having access to all of the healthcare services they may need to prevent them dying from pregnancy or childbirth.