Senior officials at a forum in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, said Wednesday that achieving gender parity in Africa requires enacting policies and legislations informed by sound research and data.
Director of Women, Gender and Youth Directorate at the African Union Commission, Prudence Ngwenya, said quality data is key to advancing gender parity on the continent and achieving Africa’s growth and transformation agenda.
“These data-driven interventions will guide policymakers in mainstreaming gender perspectives to education, health, employment and promotion of climate resilience for both men and women,” Ngwenya said.
Senior policymakers, lawmakers, researchers and campaigners attended the two-day regional validation workshop on gender data generation, translation and use in Africa.
The programme was convened by the African Union, AU, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, and the Nairobi-based African Institute for Development Policy, AFIDEP.
The workshop focuses on the role of data in accelerating gender parity across the continent.
In spite of Africa’s commitment to global and continental gender equality frameworks, progress has been uneven, the participants said, noting that women remain disproportionately excluded from basic services such as education, clean drinking water, sanitation and housing.
According to the AU, only 16 of the 54 African countries have closed at least 70 percent of their gender gap, and at the current pace, it could take 102 years to achieve full gender parity on the continent.
Ngwenya stressed that data would be pivotal in shaping targeted policies, legislation and investments to eliminate barriers that prevent women and girls from realising their full potentials.
Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Gender, Culture, the Arts, and Heritage of Kenya, Anne Wang’ombe, urged African countries to leverage updated data to improve literacy levels, healthcare access, education and skills development for women and girls.
Wang’ombe stressed that quality data would also support grassroots advocacy efforts to eliminate harmful practices such as child marriages and female genital mutilation that have hindered progress toward gender equality.
Executive Director of AFIDEP, Eliya Zulu, called on African governments to invest in research and data collection to address emerging threats to gender equality, including climate change, rising public debt, conflicts and inflationary pressures.
Zulu emphasised that reforming macroeconomic policies, access to finance, skills upgrading and progressive leadership would be pivotal to placing women and girls at the center of national development programmes. (Xinhua/NAN)
