Economic Empowerment
THE 2012 International Conference on African Women Development opened here on Wednesday with Vice President Joice Mujuru urging African women to take charge of their own destiny in order to improve themselves.
VP Mujuru, who is leading a delegation that includes Small and Medium scale Enterprises Minister Sithembiso Nyoni, Zimbabwean Ambassador to Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates Mr Mark Grey Marongwe and her permanent secretary Mr Ushewunesu Munodawafa, said the future of African women lay in their hands.
"We can choose to continue being docile and subservient and remain in the periphery or stand up for what is right and improve the lives of the girl child and indeed our continent.
"We can do it, after all some of us shared trenches with our brothers to liberate our countries," she said.
She said in order to succeed African women need to work together and share ideas.
"This business of pulling each other down should end. If one of us has an idea we should support the idea and celebrate its success," she said.
She said that the sharing of ideas as well as promotion of indigenous knowledge was critical in nation building.
Apart from this, VP Mujuru said there was need for governments in Africa to introduce reforms that will enable women to be catalysts for development.
These include legal and statutory reforms, education, culture, gender based budgeting and affirmative action.
In terms of legal and statutory reforms, VP Mujuru said it was critical for Governments to come up with legal frameworks and policies that eliminated structural barriers whether political, social, cultural or economic.
"It should be the duty of every Government to promote and protect the rights of women and facilitate the attainment of gender equality," she said.
This, she said, was critical as women constituted 40 percent of the world's workforce.
She expressed concern at the slow pace at which African governments were taking to implement treaties that empowered women.
"At continental level, we have the African Union Constitutive Act, the solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa and the Protocol on the rights of Women in Africa within the African Charter on Human and People's Rights.
"Progress in attaining set targets has been disappointingly slow. The question that arises then is: Are governments committed to these pronouncements?" she asked.
In SADC, she said the ratification of the Protocol on Gender and Development had also been slow, a factor that had affected the representation of women in politics and decision-making positions.
Turning to Zimbabwe, VP Mujuru said Zimbabwe had demonstrated its commitment to gender equality by prioritising Millennium Development Goals number three, one and six which deal with gender equality, poverty reduction and combating HIV and Aids respectively.
In addition, she said the country had enacted a number of laws to empower women among them the Administration of Estates Amendment Act, the national gender policy, the Sexual Offences Act and the Domestic Violence Act.
Vice President Mujuru said her office had initiated the Family Dignity /Hunhu Kumhuri programme as a household based approach to women economic empowerment and rural development.
"This initiative was born out of the recognition of increased poverty in the rural areas among women due to an imbalance in development in favour of urban areas.
"This resulted in rural-urban migration that caused a strain on social services and housing in urban areas. The family dignity programme focuses on the family with its primary target being women," she said.
She said in terms of agriculture the family dignity initiative emphasised the need for diversity in agriculture to include horticulture and animal husbandry so as to complement the production of maize as the staple food.
VP Mujuru said the imposition of illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe by western countries was, however, derailing the meaningful support of the family programme to enable them have irrigation facilities.
Speaking during the same occasion the executive director for the Centre for Economic and Leadership Development, Mrs Furo Giami, who organised the conference called for women empowerment as a means to reducing poverty.
She said the workshop was a platform to find common ground to help women to further build on the innate (good) leadership qualities embedded in them.
The International Conference, which is being held under the theme "the role of women as catalysts for Africa's development in the emerging Decade", ends on Saturday.
On Saturday night VP Mujuru will receive an award in recognition of her achievements in politics as well as her role in empowering other women.
The awards night will be graced by the Nigerian First Lady Mrs Patience Jonathan who will be the guest speaker and Mrs Ida Betty Odinga, the wife of Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who is also receiving an award.