African Women’s Decade.

Grassroots approach to gender equality and women’s empowermen

The African Women’s Decade was launched

in Nairobi Kenya on October 15, 2010. The

overarching objective of AWD 2010-2020 was to

review and celebrate progress made towards

gender equality and women’s empowerment

and to articulate concrete actions that should

be taken to accelerate momentum in

implementation. The Decade provides an

opportunity for Africa’s global leadership for the

rejuvenation of women’s movements with a focus

on youth and grassroots women leaders; and to

maintain the drive for empowering African women,

as well as scaling up and ring fence funding for

gender equality and women’s empowerment

programmes in the context of the current financial

and economic crisis; finally the Decade aims to

mobilize actors for accelerated implementation of

the commitments to gender equality and women's

empowerment. The Decade will focus on ten

themes

1. Fighting poverty and

Promoting Economic

Empowerment and

Entrepreneurship:

 Attain decent work for women

and equal opportunity in

employment, promotion and movement

towards parity at the work place

 Create employment and services by

supporting Women entrepreneurs

particularly in informal sectors, including

Small, Medium Enterprise (SME), Medium

Enterprise (ME) and grow them to big

businesses

2. Agriculture and Food Security

 Achieving food security and fighting hunger.

 Increased women’s access to agricultural

land, farm inputs, credit, technology,

extension services, irrigation and water.

 Link women to markets through value

addition of their products including agrobased

supply chain and creating new markets

for their produce including organic food stuffs.

3. Health, Maternal Mortality and

HIV&AIDS

 Improve women’s health,

 Reduce maternal mortality

 Address HIV/AIDS including the

disproportionate burden on women and girls

through increased infections, spread and

increased workload, as well as unequal access

medical service including to ARVs and good

nutrition.

4. Education, Science and Technology

 Achieve parity in education at 2ary and

3ary levels and higher retention rates for

girls

 Increased literacy levels for women

through adult education

 Contribution of Women Scientists including

Information and Communication

Technology

5. Environment and Climate

Change

 Identify women’s roles in mitigating

climate change, making sure

they benefit from the new

global, regional and national

packages to fight climate change.

6. Peace and Security and

Violence Against Women

 Promote the implementation of

the international and regional

commitments on women, peace

and security including United Nations

Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820,

1888 and 1889.

 Work with the African Union Peace and

Security Department, The Peace and Security

Council and the Panel of the Wise to

strengthen responses to violence against

women in conflict situations; and to promote a

stronger role for women in conflict resolutions

and peace processes.

7. Governance and Legal Protection

 Support the participation in political and

electoral processes at national and local

levels.

Brought by Elias Soka