Women should be empowered to participate in Africa’s economic development if robust growth is to be sustained, political leaders said at the ongoing African Development Bank (AfDB) Annual Meetings yesterday.  

Government ministers and women rights activists from different countries called for fair and equal access to land ownership, bank credit and education for women across the continent at a panel on gender equality. 

Ngazi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s minister for finance, said there should be more discussion on how women can be included in Africa’s economic prosperity. 

"The growth that we are experiencing on the continent, including my country, is of such quality that it has not helped reduce gender disparity,” Okonjo-Iweala said. 

She said improving girls’ education and economic empowerment are essential to reducing gender disparity on the continent. 

Enrolment of girls in school went up 40 per cent in Nigeria’s Kano state, where they ran a pilot programme of conditional cash transfer to parents who sent their daughter to school, Okonjo-Iweala said. 

Sending girls to school not only provides them with the knowledge to participate in their country’s economy, but it also reduces the likelihood of early marriage. 

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of UN Women, said getting married or having children too early is detrimental to gender equality. 

"Their capacity to be productive citizens is cut off and their right to make a difference is also lost,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said. 

She also advocated for giving women more access to productive resources in agriculture. 

Women provide the majority of agricultural labour in Africa, but there are few female landowners. 

"It has been argued that if we were to give women just as much input as we supply for men, we would be able to increase food security of about 150 million people,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said. 

The Rwandan government is championng land reforms. 

According to Oda Gasinzigwa, the Rwandan minister of gender and family promotion, after a legal framework was created to register land ownership, 26 per cent of owners are women and many are the sole head of their household. 

Access to credit facilities

Bineta Diop, the executive director of Femmes Africa Solidarité, a women activism group, called on AfDB to make it easier for women to access credit. In many countries, credit is only available to landowners. 

"We have been told the Bank is there to build roads and not to take care of women, even though they represent more than half of the world population,” Diop. 

She said banks should establish a guarantee fund to give women access to credit so that they can start businesses and enterprises. 

"We need to have banks that will invest so that women can produce, women can sell and women can have access to markets,” Diop said. 

The panelists called on countries like Togo, where women do not have the right to own or inherit land, to institute legal reforms that would give women fair and equal stature in society and access to economic resources. 

But Okonjo-Iweala stressed the importance of educating men to achieve gender equality. 

"Women have to educate their boys. Not just laws,” Okonjo-Iweala said. "Many of us have laws that are not implemented.” 

She said the time is now for building a society in which men respect women and support gender equality.