Make Every African Woman Leader Count

Abstract

abstractInspired by the launch of the African Women’s Decade (AWD) in 2010, the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), and more recently the adoption of the African Union Agenda 2063 and the global commitment, the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its core principle to “leave no one behind”, Make Every Woman Count’s (MEWC) annual report evaluates the progress, or lack thereof, being made to include and promote the rights of women at the country, regional, and Pan-African levels. MEWC aims to shed light on the situation of women’s rights in Africa through the collection of disaggregated data. MEWC has compiled an annual report to track the progress of the AWD commitments since 2011. A presentation of progress and developments for each country on the continent will be made in relation to the AWD benchmarks of women’s equality until 2020. In past years, the AWD Report tracked progress on several different issues affecting women. However, for 2017-2018, MEWC focused solely on one area: Women’s participation in decision-making processes and leadership to place the spotlight on the situation of women leaders in Africa in all sectors, including women MPs, women ministers, women in the judiciary and women in the private sector. MEWC believes that the collection of data is an important tool that can be used by human rights advocates, academics, national and international organisations, governments, and activists to work for the achievement of gender equality. This article presents the work of MEWC, an emerging digital space for African women’s voice, and shares some of the findings of its recent report ‘African Women’s Decade 2010-2020: Women’s participation in decision-making and leadership’. Last, based on the report’s outcomes, it explores ways to address the gender inequalities in leadership.