African Center for Gender and Development

Partnership with the Regional Economic Communities in addressing gender issues on the African continent

Addis Ababa , 13 July 2009 (ECA) -ECA is organizing jointly with UNIFEM a workshop to review and discuss ways of strengthening the role that the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) can play to boost advances made in gender equality and the empowerment of women in Africa.

Scheduled to take place from 14-16 July 2009, the meeting b rings together representatives for the gender units of the RECs; representatives from UNIFEM's sub-regional offices; representatives of UNIFEM’s AU/ECALiaison office; the gender focal persons in ECA's Sub regional Offices, staff from African Center for Gender and Social Development and gender focal persons from ECA substantial divisions.

Effort to address gender equality has been driven largely by rigorous advocacy for the recognition of women’s human rights across the continent through sustained cooperation amongst various development actors and stakeholders. This cooperation includes intergovernmental bodies that include ECOWAS, SADC, EAC, lGAD, ECCAS and COMESA who have come up with strategies on how to address gender issues in their regions.

To keep this momentum, the role played by all these stakeholders needs to be enhance, hence the need for constant joint reflection on the tools and strategies used for gender mainstreaming

Over the years, ECA has been supporting RECs and member States to meet commitments made on addressing gender equality and the empowerment of women. Similarly the AU, AfDB and UNIFEM have also been assisting within their mandates and scope of work. However, collaboration amongst all these institutions is critical to ensure a critical mass and efficient use of limited resources. The recently held 6th African Development Forum (ADF) on provides a good illustration of the effectiveness of partnerships resulting in clear articulation of issues to be addressed through collaboration and defining a mutual agenda of implementation.

The purpose of the workshop due to start on 14 July 2009 is to review the different tools and methodologies used by the RECs, ECA and UNIFEM in mainstreaming gender in the different sectors and development initiatives. It is anticipated that the workshop will begin to shape a collective strategy towards the work on gender mainstreaming on the continent. Specifically, the objectives of the meeting are as follows:

To review how each institution’s support towards gender mainstreaming at member States level ;

To take stock of the successes and challenges of mainstreaming gender, with a view to improving on these;

To assess strengths of the different tools used by different entities in the work on gender;

To build consensus on the best possible ways of responding to national requests for support of gender mainstreaming efforts;

To rationalize support to member States in gender mainstreaming;

To define a 2-3 year programme of partnership on gender mainstreaming on the continent.

The major expected outcomes of the Workshop include the production of a map showing the milestones for various institutions with regards to gender mainstreaming, a review of the various gender policies and tools for gender mainstreaming used by these different actors, but most importantly the definition of a collaborative Plan to better address gender issues on the continent using gender mainstreaming as a tool.