INTRODUCING THE AFRICAN GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT INDEX
The African Gender and Development Index (AGDI) a tool that ECA has developed to measure the performance of Member States in meeting their commitments and obligations towards the international and regional conventions on gender equality and women's advancement they are signatory to. It is intended to address the lack of sex-disaggregated data at the national and regional levels and to overcome the technical challenges for tracking progress achieved for the advancement of women and gender equality.
In addition, the tool is meant to streamline reporting on various instruments such as the Beijing and Dakar Platforms for Action on Women, CEDAW and its optional Protocol, the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, the ICPD Plan of Action Plus Five, the MDGs and Africa Peer Review Mechanism.
The AGDI is a specifically African index in three respects:
• First, it takes into account the major African charters and documents that have a bearing on gender relations;
• Secondly, it identifies gender gaps in access to social capabilities, economic opportunities and political power and facilitates the review of the underlying gender relations in Africa;
• Thirdly, its findings are specifically from the African countries, based on nationally available statistics.
Objectives
In developing this index, ECA hopes to achieve the following objectives:
• To provide African policymakers and their partners with an appropriate tool to measure gender equality and equity, and women's empowerment;
• To help monitor the progress made in implementing conventions that African countries have ratified;
• To democratize statistics and qualitative monitoring tools that are effective and easy to use;
• To stimulate interdepartmental cooperation within the Ministries that will apply it.
Components of AGDI
The components of AGDI are the following:
• Gender Status Index (GSI), which captures quantitatively measurable issues related to gender equality. It is based on three blocs: social power referred to as "capabilities", economic power "opportunities" and political power "agency".
• African Women's Progress Scoreboard (AWPS), which measures government policy performance regarding women's advancement and empowerment. It focuses on qualitative issues and fills the gap between purely quantitative indicators, such as those contained in the GSI, and more country-specific or sector-specific indicators, or those related to decision-making and well-being at household and individual level. The AWPS is composed of four blocks, namely, women's rights, social power 'capabilities', economic power 'opportunities' and political power 'agency'.
GSI and AWSP combine both quantitative and qualitative indicators. Thus, AGDI is a strategic tool for stimulating the process of community participation and enhancing political awareness of gender issues.
3. Methodology
The methodology adopted for developing AGDI included the following steps:
• Definition of the theoretical framework, based on a review of existing indices and identification of their strengths and limitations;
• Analysis of the global and regional documents that African States are signatory to and their monitoring mechanisms;
• Definition of the indicators for the computation of the index.
• Presentation of the draft AGDI for scrutiny to a working group of experts from Africa and Europe to ensure transparency and quality control. The experts included statisticians, economists, gender and development specialists and social development practitioners.
• Validation of the draft index by a panel of regional advisors comprising representatives of 12 pilot countries, UN organizations and other development partners.
• Launching of AGDI at the Fourth African development Forum ( ADF IV) in Addis Ababa on 12 October 2004 and endorsement by Ministers and experts during the Seventh African Regional Conference on Women (Beijing + 10) held in October 2004 during ADF IV.
• Field trials of the Index in 12 African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda. In each country, a selected independent institution conducted the research.
• A national advisory panel was set up comprising representatives from the following ministries or their equivalents: National Machinery for Women's Affairs or gender, health, education, in addition to national bureau of statistics. Two independent experts with gender and development experience and statistics and an NGO representative were also included in the panel. The role of the National Advisory Panel was to support the institutions in the collection of accurate national data, assist institutions in accessing the relevant data; review the institutions' methodology for collecting data; review the data collected by the National Institution; and review the national report prepared by the national institutions before it is submitted to ECA.
• The results of the field trials are published in the African Women's Report (AWR) 2005. Subsequent editions of the AWR will allow for more in-depth analysis of both individual indicators and of particular trends and salient issues. A major focus will be on the sharing of best practices, in order to allow African governments to learn from the experiences of neighboring countries.
The tool will be expanded to all the 53 countries in Africa so as to strengthen the skills of statisticians and government officers in collection of gender disaggregated data, and use of the data in monitoring development programmes.
:: The African Gender and Development Index
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