African Center for Gender and Development





Objective of the African Center for Gender and Development The overall objective of the African Center for Gender and Development (ACGD) is to inform and influence the content as well as the direction of economic and social development within Africa, with a view to making them more gender- responsive. Programme Overview Objectives ECA's gender policy underlines the message that African women's economic and social advancement is a crucial precondition for Africa's development, and that gender must be an integral part of the development challenges Africa is facing. Economic and social policies, if not properly designed, can have differential and negative impacts on women and men. A major role that ECA plays, therefore, is to support Governments' efforts in designing and implementing gender-responsive policies and programs. In order to achieve this, ACGD's work focuses on monitoring progress in the implementation of Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action at sub-regional and national levels, and building capacity for gender mainstreaming into sector-related policies at national and sub-regional levels. ACGD has also developed tools for enhancing member state capacity in monitoring and evaluation of internationally and nationally agreed women's empowerment as well as gender equality objectives. Major Activities Taking into consideration the commitments of the African Ministers meeting to gender equality , equity and women's empowerment at the Seventh Regional Conference on Women( Beijing +10) held in October 2004, as well as similar commitments stated in regional and international policy frameworks and instruments (mainly the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs, NEPAD, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human an People's Rights on the Rights of Women, the Solemn Declaration of African Heads of State and Government on Gender Equality in Africa, etc), ACGD is further focusing its mission on the following activities: • Monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action on Women, ten years after 1995 world conference on women in Beijing; • Analysis of national sectoral policies and guidance on adequate strategies to be developed for mainstreaming gender in poverty reduction programmes so as to improve women's access to productive resources and recognize the economic value of their unpaid work; • Developing a conceptual framework to mainstream gender in budgetary policy and processes; • Enhancing the capacity of Member States and ECA in gender mainstreaming so as to better formulate, implement and evaluate their gender- inclusive development programmes; • Building the capacity of Member States to use the African Gender Development Index (AGDI) and other tools developed by ECA to monitor the status of women in comparison to men in different sectors; • Supporting national and sub-regional NGO's to advocate for the elimination of gender-based discrimination; • Developing adequate information strategy to facilitate a better exchange of experiences, promote partnership and strengthen networking; • Producing and publishing the up- to date data on the status of women in Africa, for example the African Women's Report, as a flagship publication. Expected Accomplishments • A greater awareness and commitment on the part of decision-makers and national experts with regard to the recognition of the economic value of women's unpaid work and their time in the formulation of budgetary policy and processes; • Strengthening national gender machineries to formulate and implement adequate gender policies; • Effective moves by Member States to engender national poverty reductions strategies and budgetary policy and processes; • Sustainable use and evaluation by Member States of the various tools developed by ECA/ACGD to monitor the status of women in Africa and track the impact of gender mainstreaming on this status. Major Outputs A- Substantive servicing of meetings - The Seventh African Regional Conference on Women (Beijing+10) held in October 2004; - Meeting of the Committee on Women and Development (CWD) and Meetings of its Bureau; - ADF Symposium on Youth for Leadership in the 21st Century ( 2006) B- Ad hoc expert group meeting - Measuring and integrating time-use data in national accounts C- Publications C-1 : Recurrent - The African Women's Report - ACGD Newsletter Gender Net - Upgrade and update ACGD bilingual Website C-2 : Non recurrent - Measuring and integrating time-use data in national accounts and national budgets D- Technical materials - A gender-aware macroeconomic model to evaluate policies - The African Gender and Development Index (AGDI) E- Technical Cooperation and Advisory Services - Training Workshops on the implementation of the Outcome and the Way Forward of the 7 th Regional Conference on Beijing+10 evaluation - Training workshops on application of an Easy Reference Guide to integrate women's contribution in non-market work in national accounts and budgets - Training workshops on gender mainstreaming, using the African Gender and Development Index (AGDI) F- Special Events - Forum to introduce ACGD Tools for Gender Mainstreaming at the 49 th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (March 2005 in New York) - Orientation Workshop for African Delegates to the Commission on the Status of Women (March 2005 in New York) G- Training in gender mainstreaming in ECA - Four training workshops to build the capacity of ECA divisions and Sub-regional Offices to mainstream gender in their outputs - Participation of ACGD in engendering ECA's divisional seminars and workshops H- Cooperation with African and non-African non-governmental organisations - A training workshop on mainstreaming gender in programmes of international cooperation for development (Spain 2005) • Consultative workshop between ECA, MOI University School of Medicine and Baleares University on partnership for capacity building in gender and health (March 2006 in Kenya).