Conference goals and organization

- The Conference organisers have invited about twelve different categories of actors: goverment representatives, decision-makers, parlamentarians, cooperating and multilateral agencies, women's, youth's, civil society's, religious', trade organizations, and a great number of resource persons.

- The participants are expected to bring answers to the questions pertaining to the four conference themes, in order to design strategic actions that will be integrated into the African Centre for Women's 1998-2000 program, within the mandate given by ECOSOC to ECA for the follow-up of the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms. These lines of actions will be submitted to the Heads of State and Goverments Summit of the organization for African Unity, in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso, June 1998) and to the decision-makers and cooperating agencies.

- The aim is that significant strategic actions would be implemented by the year 2005, in a series of domains: gender-sensitive national accounts and budget allocation, women's access to land ownership and basic social services, community information centres for women,  and womens' participation in the peace process and decision-making.

- A program for disseminating the results of the Conference will be launched for the organizations that have not been able to participate in the Conference, as well as the establishment of women caucuses in each country, to implement the results of the Conference. A series of films and radio broadcasts will pursue and enhance the results of the meeting.

Connectivity during the conference

Free connectivity will not be provided. The Cybercafe will be open to the participants. The Demonstration Telecentre sponsored by IDRC will be used to show cases and possibilities for women. The Electronic Media Centre is reserved for invited journalists, and will not be open to the public. A Business Centre will be open, for a fee, to the participants.       

New Recommendations Under Discussion

- Governments must encourage women's NGO participation in the policy definitions of which they are concerned (currently in discussion about modalities, and the possible extension of this recommendation to cooperating agencies and the private sector).

- Governments must adopt laws for affirmative actions benefitting women, and be responsible for it to (who, under discussion), (discussion about quota rates, times lines, compensation)

- Decision-makers must commit themselves (along which modalities?) to support development of women's leadership skills required for national political office.

- Government and donor agencies working together must adopt affirmative action policies benefitting women, and associate women NGOs and the AFR-FEM group with the formulation and implementation of these policies, including those using ICTs.

- Governments must encourage collective ownership of land by women (under discussion).

- A on-line ThinkTank on Womens' Demands in Politics should be created.

- Governments and donor agencies must commit themselves to identifying and addressing priority research gaps on women's development issues, gathering gender-disaggregated data on key social and economic quality of life indicators, promoting sharing of such data, and incorporating gender analysis of the data into the formulation of policies and programs. (N.B.: In the following past week's activity report, new recommendations are included deriving from analysis, that have not already been discussed). Women and Economic Development Development policies: Women's NGO participation in the conception of policies that affect them must be a priority for governements. The need is to articulate gender analysis, sustainable development and sustainable livelihoods analysis. Statistics: The paucity of data, both qualitative and quantitative, weakens the ability to advocate on behalf of African women. This data allows us to build, implement and assess the impact of policies. A series of data to be collected, processed, disseminated and periodically re-evaluated throughout all the continent must be drawn up, with the help of the Statistic Offices and the donor agencies.

The mandate to centralise this data should be given to a continent-wide agency. Gender and poverty : Access to land is a central question, as an economic resource as well as a security factor for women. The issue of growth is important for national economies, but the point is first to produce more efectively and more humanely. It is evident that the links between gender issues and growth are still insufficiently known. This must be further analysed by  moving discussions of gender equity and poverty reduction beyond the realm of welfare provision, into one at the heart of development policy. In that context, African women and men, and particularly the most marginalised, must actively participate in the formulation of the policies, mechanisms and processes, and not be mere objects of policies. Transports and means of communication: The supply of transport and communication facilities for development, including substitute means of transport is a key element for African womens' and mens' development.         

Recommendations

-  Develop the analysis of links between gender issues, sustainable development and sustainable livelihood. - Identify a limited number of key statistical data on the place of women in development, to be collected, processed, disseminated and periodically re-evaluated, by a continent-wide organization.

- Develop analysis, identification, sharing and dissemination of information, formulation and implementation of strategic actions, with the participation of African men and women, on links between gender issues, poverty and growth. Some of these activities may be conducted on-line. - Make transport and communication development, as well as substitute transport activities a priority of policy. Governance, Political Participation and Education Some national experiences show that it is possible to develop processes of political consultation, associating all the social actors, including civil society organizations and the private sector, to the consideration and formulation of laws - the final law project is then the synthesis of all the proposals

- without the actors appearing to threaten governments' roles and responsibilities. The governments could also recognise a collective representation of NGOs, including women's NGOs and systematically associate them with the formulation of policies and implementation of strategies. In order that women get interested in politics, it is important to link political discourse to their daily lives, and to sensitize young generations during their formative years, as well as active adult women, around the basic needs of people: food, shelther, clothing, health, work, education and communication, oriented towards self-sustainability. Nevertheless, women's involvement in the political sphere does not depend only on education, but primarily on social, political and economic transformation processes: industrial growth and development, provision of alternatives and options/choices for life, urbanization, shake-up of women's social dependency. Women's political participation is difficult, when viewed in the context of poverty, patriarchy and weak freedom of expression. In Africa, educated women are often considered a threat to the status quo. Education programs for women and girls are a vehicle for change, that goverments must support. They also must review the electoral rules in order to allow women to better participate in the political life. Institution of quotas in politics and in the decision making structures must accompany training actions towards politicians and decision-makers, men and women, and a set of activity programs for more equitable access to productive resources. It would be wise to study the experiences of countries who have launched such policies.

Recommendations

- Develop consultative processes with all the concerned sectors of society for policy formulation and consultation, and systematically install consultative processes between governments and NGOs.

- Develop the linkages between political discourse and the statisfaction of the basic needs of women and youth.

- Develop training programs for political participation of young generations and adult women, and link them to social, political and economic transformation actions.

- Combine the initiatives in political training with the other uses of ICTs.

- Develop training programs in gender analysis for political leaders, based on the experience acquired by countries which have already implemented quota policies.

- Review the electoral laws to allow women to have a greater participation in political actions. Women and ICTs The cost of connectivity is too dependant on tight and rigid price policies. Initiatives have been launched with the aim of increasing access possibilities to marginalised communities, to focus on policies and strategies, and to put access and content development as the first priority. ICTs may be used by women for developing their activities - by facilitating their access to information and reducing the marginal costs - but they can also give new opportunities for women, through the economic exploitation of information needs. Promoting the use of ICTs by women will develop new partnerships between womens' groups, NGOs that support them, and technical structures for the promotion of ICT uses. Rural women, women traders, women in the media, all have information needs that ICTs could help meet. These needs are only beginning to be assessed.

Recommendations

- Reinforce the initiatives that aim to lessen the techniques and access costs, and to implement development politicies and content development. - Develop investigations on economic actions through which women could benefit from ICTs.

- Develop and implement partnerships between womens' groups, development NGOs that support them and technical support structures in the field of ICTs.

- Strengthen actions, including online actions, for women in media, in terms of gender training and appraisal and validation of African womens' roles in economic development.

- Create and reinforce online exchanges between African women and create continental on-line directories of connected womens' groups in Africa. Internet Resources

- IDRC sponsored ECA Conference papers on Gender and ICTs:

<> - Africa Policy Information Centre :

<> - International Forum for Rural Transport and Development (IFRTD)

<> Documents, Research, Books - Association of African Women Scholars (AAWS) - Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay "Women in Africa: Studies in Economic and Social Change" - CEA - World Bank: Internet Economic Toolkit - Virtual Souk - Gender Empowerment Measure Table in the UNDP 1997 Human Development Report - (In preparation) African Leadership Forum "Index on the status of women in Africa" - Perpetua Katepa-Kalala: database of documentation (published and unpublished) on "Gender and Economic Reforms in Africa". - Journal mensuel "La Cite" - Sharon Sichilongo: "ambia: The woman who could succeed Chiluba", Zambia National Mirror/Misa, 14 April 1998 - "India: Micro Credit & Women", Asialink - Electronic Newsletter Information Exchange for Social Change, Issue No. 9 (April 1998) - Hilda Munyua: "Application of information and communication technologies in the agricultural sector in Africa: a gender perspective with special reference to women",   CAB International, Nairobi (IDRC/CEA paper) - PRODDER: "The Southern African Development Directory",  1997/8, Seventh Edition - IPS, Service d'information des femmes - <femmes-afrique-info>, service d'information electronique en francais sur la sante et les droits des femmes en Afrique Conferences - 2nd International Conference on Women in Africa & the African Diaspora (WAAD)  "Women in Africa and the African Diaspora: Health and Human Rights", Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, October 22-27, 1998 - ECA: Conference on Global Connectivity for Africa, 2-4 June 1998 Experiences Related - UNESCO network of women's studies - Centre for Cross Cultural Research on Women, University of Oxford - African Information Society Initiative - African Leadership Forum: Conference  "Towards the Enhancement of African Womens Participation in Leadership and Decision-Making levels in the 21st Century", Accra, 1997. - UNDP's "Sustainable Livelihoods" project - "Gender and Economic Reforms in Africa" (GERA) initiative - League for Woman and Child Education in Cameroun - Programme Culture of Peace supported by UNESCO - Countries with quota systems: Uganda, India - African Economic Research Consortium - Open Society Foundation - Violence Against Women's organization Centre in Alexander, Johannesburg (South Africa) - International Forum for Rural Transport and  Development (IFRTD): program on Gender and Rural Transport - Trade Point - UNDP project on international trade in Africa - Sierra-Leone: Ministry of education/Central Statistics Office - Annual Statistical Digest 1990 - Statistics on electoral records in Sierra Leone, Mr. John Musa, a Sierra Leonean Attorney living in Washington, DC - INFOLIT, Information Literacy Initiative, Western Cape Region, South Africa

For questions and/or suggestions on the following Working Sessions, please send an e-mail to dialogue@un.org or eca40th@un.org or ecainfo@uneca.org

Secretariat of the Conference for information and correspondence:
Economic Commission for Africa
African Centre for Women (ACW)
P.O. Box 3001
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Tel: (251.1) 51 89 19 (Direct)/51 72 00 Ext. 33700
Fax: (251-1) 512233 (Direct)/512785
E-mail: eca40th@un.org
Internet: http://www.un.org/depts/eca/eca40th