Bolstering Partnership with the Commonwealth Secretariat in Gender- related Issues

September 28, 2006

In a recent visit to the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Dr. Auxilia Ponga, Adviser at the Gender Section of the Commonwealth Secretariat (CS) had a meeting with the ACGS's Gender and Women in Development Section, to discuss potential avenues of collaboration with ECA and particularly with the ACGS.

In her introductory remarks, Thokozile Ruzvidzo, ACGS Officer- in- Charge, made a brief presentation on ECA's role in the African and international landscape. She also underlined that partnership between both organizations is not new and cited various examples of mutual collaboration, namely the recent training of parliamentarians coming from many SADEC countries.

Dr. Ponga was also debriefed on major activities undertaken by the Center through presentations made by ACGS team on the various programmes that are currently implemented. Commending these activities and programmes, Dr. Ponga insisted that she "felt all the more encouraged to join efforts with ECA in order to support gender machineries in Commonwealth member countries and thus help them build their capacity and boost their impact." Dr. Ponga also indicated that, as the CS gender section has embarked on an ambitious training programme and an e- learning comprehensive course on gender mainstreaming for the public sector, it would be useful to consider a future partnership with ACGS in this regard. .

Touching upon the gender -aware macro economic model the Center has been piloting, Dr. Ponga added that it would be useful if both organizations could share information, especially with regard to the various time- use and household surveys that have been undertaken so far. She also offered to share with ECA/ACGS the monitoring and evaluation tools that the Commonwealth Secretariat has developed in four areas, namely: gender, human rights and law; gender and democracy; gender and poverty eradication; and gender and HIV/AIDS. In this context, it was recommended that monitoring and evaluation tools should be harmonized and unified.