Does organizing groups of rural women producers contribute to empowerment as well as increasing their incomes? Yes, it can be a step towards increased empowerment under the right conditions.

Women rarely have equal say in or leadership of mixed groups, while women-only groups may face challenges with business viability. Empowerment was greater when women participate in informal as well as formal groups.

Learning from experience, development actors need to adopt flexible approaches to supporting collective action, taking the wider context into account, and supporting women’s own initiatives.

We also need to pay more attention to the policy environment, setting explicit targets to address women’s participation and leadership, and protecting the space for informal association.

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Instead of seeking to ‘catch up’ with Western feminism, several African countries and social groups have forged their own conceptions of gender equality and provided models for the rest of the world to follow.

Although the older welfare-oriented and developmental agendas persist to this day, a new emphasis on political participation and advocacy has emerged.

New women’s organisations formed to improve leadership skills, encourage women’s political involvement, promote women’s political leadership, press for legislative changes, and conduct civic education.

Unlike many other rights, which are dictated from a top-down international (and often Western) level, Africa has actively enhanced global understandings of feminism.

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Gender-based violence is a persistent worldwide problem, occurring in every culture in all societies. The underlying problem seems to be that many societies consider it a ‘private’ affair and therefore ‘acceptable’.

Sadly, the fight against this scourge is left to a few committed individuals and civil society organizations that continue to support victims and lobby for the dignity, freedom, and security of women.

Sustainable development can never be realized when women and children are petrified and brutalized by violence and any other form of gender based discrimination of which the state has a duty to prevent.

The epidemic of violence against women can be eliminated. This requires a multiplicity of interventions, including tightening the legal instruments, moral and political will, and society rallying against this violation of women’s rights.

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Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a global outrage, which has already affected 100-140 million women and girls worldwide. Since 1992, Equality Now has been working to end all forms of violence and discrimination against women and girls.

Eliminating FGM globally is one of our key priorities. Although progress has been slow at times, recent developments such as the UN Global Ban, strengthens our ongoing struggle for lasting change.

We are encouraged too by recent positive developments in Africa, e.g in the Gambia, in Kenya, in Somalia, in Uganda and in Burkina Faso. However, in Liberia and Sierra Leone this malpractice continues unabated.

A world without FGM is in sight, but we now need to redouble our efforts to ensure that worldwide legislative change takes place, and also that educational efforts are drastically increased.

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Many agriculture and rural development projects in Africa aim to enhance food security for the most resource-poor, especially women-headed households and children.

Yet these primarily large- and medium-scale agricultural investments marginalize smallholder farmers, mostly women. This approach intensifies gender inequalities and food insecurity in countries like Zambia.

This article assesses the extent to which two leading development banks’ agriculture investments in Zambia address gender inequality and reduce malnutrition. The banks fail to guarantee women’s access to project activities and benefits or measure projects’ varied gender impacts.

The article concludes with recommendations for making agriculture and rural development investments responsive to women’s needs and concerns, and thus more effective.

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A gender analysis of migration looks beyond simple differences in migration behaviour between men and women; it examines the inequalities underlying those differences and how these are shaped by the social and cultural contexts of the individual.

Migration can provide new opportunities to improve women and men’s lives and change oppressive gender relations. However, migration can also entrench inequalities and expose women to new vulnerabilities.

Outmigration from the African rural areas to the more industrialised centres has invariably led to the decline of agricultural production, as wives of migrants are entrusted, or rather left to struggle, with the responsibility of subsistence farming households.

Research indicates that remittances improve families’ overall economic well-being, while also fostering social capital formation through increasing the minimal amount of money that households save or give as gifts to other households.

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A fascinating new paper examines recent educational reforms in Mali, Niger and Senegal – three overwhelmingly Muslim, francophone countries in West Africa.

All three have tried to harness the strength of popular religiosity to make schools more attractive to parents by incorporating Muslim values and expectations and ensure training for future employment.
Such ‘hybrid schools’ have been extremely popular with parents; the challenge to the State is how to meet the high and growing demand they have created.

Despite the fears of some observers, the reforms have not exacerbated gender imbalances. At primary school level, for example, the emphasis on religion has proven particularly attractive to parents of girls. In many hybrid schools, girls outnumber boys, sometimes significantly.

Finally, preliminary indications suggest that the success rates of the hybrid schools, as measured by the number of students passing state exams, is as good as or better than that of the classic francophone schools.

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What kind of country do we South Africans want to live in? Despite the achievements we have made as a young democracy, the persistence of widespread poverty and extreme levels of inequality remain a major threat to social cohesion and nation-building. But how do we effectively and realistically reduce inequality and eliminate poverty?

The first transition within South Africa’s new dispensation focused specifically on political democratisation. As we approach 2014, and 20 years of democracy, a second transition for the Republic is required. This will entail a social and economic vision for our country over the next 30 years.

Our country needs to make significant progress if we are to truly be an inclusive and just society as envisaged in our Constitution. But it is clear that there needs to a sharpening of the debate. The sweeping sentiment and fear of nationalisation which has been hijacked and distorted by individuals in recent times must be replaced with a rationalisation.

There must be a common recognition of the fact that all of us stand to gain from the transformation of South Africa. Both leaders and citizens must commit to building a better future based on sound ethical values, mutual sacrifice and planning.

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Jobs, Justice and Equity is the title of a new report published today by the Africa Progress Panel, a high powered group of ten luminaries. The report does an excellent job of assessing the cup half empty v half full narratives on Africa, and has some great graphics – it should become a standard reference on the region. Here are some highlights:

“The extreme pessimism surrounding Africa a decade ago was unwarranted. So is the current wave of blinkered optimism. Real gains have been made and Africa has an unprecedented opportunity for sustained economic growth, shared prosperity and poverty reduction.

However, governments are failing to convert increased wealth into opportunities and employment for their most marginalized citizens and there is a growing demand for justice and equity. Inequalities across Africa are not only ethically indefensible, they are economically inefficient and politically destabilizing.”

The report points to 5 global trends that are shaping the continent: the youth surge; agriculture and climate change; the rise of the emerging powers; science, tech and innovation and ‘the rising tide of citizen action’.

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Pictures have been distributed of Sweden’s Minister of Culture feeding Linde’s ‘blackface’ with cake. Around them are seen smiling white-skinned people with glasses in their hands. One interpretation that has taken root is that Linde thereby ‘exposed’ racist structures in our society.

But it is the artist himself who bears full responsibility for this installation. Technically it was brilliant, artistically deeply problematic. It trivialises racism and its staging of a dismemberment of a black female body is shocking but directionless.

I see many things in that cake. In brief, I see a number of abuses against black women – against women – and which are not just a matter of racism. What I don’t see is how this cake restores the dignity of these women, or gives me new insights about these transgressions.

What particularly bothers me about the cake is its reduction of racism to a matter of gestures and appearances. This mirrors some features of racist thinking, but does not address the protean (and truly scandalous) reality of discrimination.

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