ECA addresses links between poverty and gender

The majority of African countries have had the political will to address gender issues and enhance the status of women in their societies, yet widespread poverty and inequality of women's access to assets remain particular problems to be addressed, K.Y. Amoako, the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), said in his opening address to a key meeting on women and development in Africa on 8 November. "Although women and men share the burdens of poverty, in most societies in Africa women are also subject to socially imposed constraints that further limit their opportunities to improve economic conditions or to equal access to public services and consumption goods," Amoako said. The first challenge was how to bring about change in the process of eradicating poverty in Africa, where it was estimated that over 70 percent of the poor were women, Amoako told a meeting of ministers of the Committee on Women and Development (CWD) in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. That meeting was held to assess progress since the last CWD meeting in Burkina Faso in 1999 in the context of commitments undertaken then on tackling gender inequalities in Africa. Delegations from more than 29 countries attended, with a mix of officials from ministries of women's affairs, finance, and economic development, UN partner agencies and NGOs. The results of this monitoring and evaluation would provide a vital input to the "African Women's Report", a periodic flagship publication of the ECA's which provided all stakeholders with information on changes being realised in the situation of women, Amoako said. The second challenge for Africa - linked to improved poverty eradication strategies - was how to address the gender inequality, which persisted in terms of access to and control of productive, human and social capital assets, according to Amoako. Women in Africa received less than 10 percent of the credit going to small farmers, and just 1 percent of the total credit given to the agricultural sector, he said, citing recent studies by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). There was a clear difference in access to essential public services, including education and health, in nearly all African countries, he added. Given that knowledge, innovation and the application of skills were key to long-term growth, it was "a missed opportunity" to deny education to girls, who, in many countries, not only outnumbered boys but also matured to be the backbone of livelihoods, Amoako said. The third significant challenge was to incorporate gender considerations in economic policies intended to help achieve the International Development Target (IDT) of reducing poverty by half by the year 2015, he said. To achieve the IDT would demand a 4 percent reduction per year in the ratio of people living in poverty, which, in turn, would require growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of about 7 percent for Africa as a whole, according to the ECA. Despite good economic performance reported in several African countries in the recent past, it frequently failed to reduce poverty, according to Amoako. That explained why poverty reduction - including systematic gender perspectives - was key to the ECA's reason for becoming actively engaged in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) of developing countries, he said. These PRSPs (which should become the basis for all concessional lending by donors and for debt relief under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative) provide "an opportune vehicle to ensure that, in eradicating poverty, all poor groups benefit", according to Amoako. The PRSP should therefore be regarded as an important entry point for including gender perspectives in a sustainable development process, and to enhance African ownership of these strategies, he said. "Governments now need to take steps to ensure that women's concerns are integrated into policies, and translated into action," he added.