Africa

COVID-19: Invest in women, involve women in decision-making says Okonjo-Iweala

Leaders on the African continent have been advised to invest in women and get women involved in decision-making and designing health and socio-economic policies and plans.

This advice was contained in a press release jointly released by Graça Machel Trust and the Foundation for Community Development CEO, Graça Machel; AU Special Envoy to Mobilize International Economic Support for the Fight Against COVID-19 and former Nigerian finance minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Dr Vera Songwe on Thursday.

The statement stated that women have been hit particularly hard by the economic downturn.

“Emerging evidence from the ILO on the impact of COVID-19 suggests that women’s economic and productive lives will be affected disproportionately. They have less access to social protections and their capacity to absorb economic shocks is very low.

“As the economic toll of the crisis is felt, there is also an increased risk that female children will be forced into early marriages, and the number of child marriages and early pregnancy may increase as girls are turned into a source of quick income for families.

“Given these shocks to society at large, it is no surprise that our food systems will be dealt a significant blow resulting in the dangerous exacerbation of food insecurity and nearly doubling current levels of widespread hunger.”

COVID 19 has disrupted supply chains and thrown the global food economy into disarray. As border closures, production stoppages, and export restrictions limit supply, demand has surged, inflating prices and impacting the world’s poorest and most marginalized people, and Africa is no exception.

“Women are central players in the food chain and key to agricultural output on the continent. 50% of the agricultural activity on the continent performed by women, who produce about 60-70% of the food in Sub Saharan Africa.”

The trio stated that the pandemic has exposed the continent’s fragile health and protection systems, with its women and children paying the most for it via an anticipated surge in child and maternal mortality, as well as a 25 per cent increase in domestic violence.

The trio called on the continent’s leaders to take bold action, by ensuring that all responses take into account gendered impacts of COVID and be informed by the voices of women.

“Women and women’s organisations should be at the heart of the COVID-19 response decision making and designing health and socio-economic policies and plans. An intentional focus on the lives and futures of women and girls is an essential part of breaking structural practices which have been marginalizing them. A system for collecting and disaggregating data needs to be put in place to ensure that the impact of the crisis on women is informing the redesign of fragile and inequitable socio-economic and health systems into fully inclusive, equitable ones.”

The statement urged government and development partners to implement gender lens economic policies and sharpen the capacity of women as engines of economic growth.

“Give women and female businesses direct access credit, loans, tax and social security payment deferrals and exemptions, and preferential procurement. Structural barriers to access to finance, inheritance, and land rights must be removed. Create and support the enabling environment for ICT infrastructure so rural and urban women are able to contribute to the digital economy and access online platforms to facilitate e-commerce and e-health/education/social exchanges.”

Also, it called on African governments to invest in women along the local food chains to improve food security.

“Response resources should target female SMMEs and rural women associations to increase productivity in both formal and informal economies, eradicate hunger and malnutrition. Boost local food production and confront head on the indignity of Africa importing its food. Food security is a fundamental investment in the building of healthy societies.

“Provide equal pay for equal work, narrow gender-based education gaps by building ICT infrastructure for online learning to bridge the inequality divide and retrain teachers on virtual curriculum so every African child, especially the girl child, has access to quality education. Efforts to protect girls from child marriage and early pregnancy and provision of safety net resources for households to keep girls in school are also needed.

“Strengthen health systems, gradually implement universal health coverage (UHC) and provide mental health services needed as key strategies to the improvement of health systems and citizen wellbeing.

“Comprehensively strengthen the criminal justice system and increase efforts around survivor support and protection. Prevention/protection efforts must be deemed as essential services and intentional mass media efforts to spur a fundamental change of mind-set whereby GBV is rejected and deemed socially unacceptable and intolerable.”

According to all three women, the pandemic presents the continent with “unprecedented opportunities” for the regeneration of the African socio-economic landscape and the movement towards a “just, equitable and sustainably prosperous” continent.

Monday Ashibogwu

Monday Michaels Ashibogwu is Editor-In-Chief of QUICK NEWS AFRICA, one of Nigeria's leading online news service.

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