Engineer Anna Dembele’s smile broadens as she shows off the low-carbon cooking kits she makes. The association she belongs to now plans to promote use of the equipment across Mali, helping people cope with inflation and tackling deforestation in the bargain.
In Africa land rights are critical to economic power. In recent history, there have been three waves of land grabs: colonization, post-independence and present-day land grabs for commercial and apparently environment preservation purposes . Governments and corporations continue to wield their power to the detriment of women in Africa.
As Napoleon Bonaparte once stated: “Women are nothing but machines for producing children”.
Forty-five-year-old Gertrude Murefu was born into poverty in the rural area of Chiendambuya in Rusape. Today, she is just one example of a highly regarded pioneer of women’s rights. At the helm of the Zimbabwe Women’s Rights Association, Murefu believes that women should be wholeheartedly committed to the process of political and economic change.
The decision by investigative judges in Guinea to file charges against a high-level military official allegedly implicated in grave violations of human rights during a massacre of protesters in 2009 is an important step toward ensuring justice for the victims, Human Rights Watch said today. Security forces were implicated in the killings of more than 150 opposition members and the rape of over 100 women in the aftermath of a peaceful demonstration.
Source: FOROYAA
"Female genital mutilation is widely practiced in The Gambia and whether this tradition is religion or not it is a form of violence against women and young girls that have to be brought to light and stopped.
Source: Times of Zambia
THE beatings started in their second year of marriage. Agnes Manda had just given birth to a baby, Sarah when her husband John, started coming home late and drunk.
Source: Daily News
HUMAN rights activitists have urged the government to designate an International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) so as to send a stronger message to communities that practice it.
Source: Daily News
DOCTORS and nurses have hailed civil society organizations that drafted the Motherhood Bill, saying it will help improve maternal and reproductive health services.
Source: FOROYAA
The women horticultural gardeners in the settlements of Brufut, Kembujeh and Lamin have during the course of last week, through the Gambia Horticultural Producers and Exporters (GAMHOPE), benefited from support in the form of assorted vegetable production inputs provided by the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) project under the Ministry of Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment.
Source: Daily Trust
On February 6 2012, the world marked the ninth annual International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C). 'Female Genital Cutting (FGC) is the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons.
Johannesburg - The man accused of orchestrating the torture and gang-rape of his estranged wife and the killing of her son - is due to make a second appearance in court on Friday.
35-year-old woman walked through a field in northern Mozambique, near where a group of teenage boys were undergoing their ritual circumcision into adulthood.
Africa’s political independence was accompanied by a clarion call to eradicate poverty, illiteracy and disease. Fifty years after the end of colonialism, the question is: To what extent has the promise of that call been realized for African women? There is no doubt that African women’s long walk to freedom has yielded some results, however painfully and slowly.
Across the Darfur region of western Sudan, female workers weighed down by heavy buckets are a common sight on building sites.
Many women, especially in rural communities, have been prevented from playing greater roles in influencing political, social, economic or even developmental and environmental community decisions that could improve their living conditions. For a long time, men have sidelined women from the development process, in the belief that they knew what was needed. Such prejudices have been hard to overcome.
Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? A challenging new book by the Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker says that the answer is “yes.”
Forum for African Women Educationists (FAWE), in collaboration with Plan Liberia, has officially launched a US$2.5 million program.
Women in the country say their struggle for equal rights is universal, whether the Islamists or military are in charge. With a tumultuous year behind it, Egypt is bracing for a fresh start - but this new democracy carries some old baggage, including the classic challenge of the marginalisation of the country's women.
Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development Hajiya Zainab Maina has said she would soon be meeting with the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria to seek his intervention on enabling women get waivers from commercial banks on their credit facilities.