50 Million African Women Project to help reduce to zero gender inequalities
East African Community Headquarters, Arusha, 17th July, 2018: Supported by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the East African Community Secretariat has conducted stakeholders’ consultative meetings in Partner States from June 19 to July 10, 2018. The main objective of the meetings was to introduce the 50 Million African Women Speak Networking Platform Project (50MWS) to stakeholders.
EAC Secretariat delegation targeted key Ministries partners to the project, including the Ministries of Gender, ICT, Trade and Ministries in charge of EAC Affairs in each Member State. EAC delegation also met stakeholders from Civil Society, NGOs and UN Agencies.
“50MWS is an online platform that will provide financial and non-financial information to women entrepreneurs for them to interact and grow their businesses’,” Mary Makoffu, the EAC Director of Social Sectors and head of the EAC delegation explained.
“We have already existing platforms of women in business across EAC and we want to partner with them and build on the existing structures to better deliver on this project,” Ms. Makoffu said.
50MWS is being implemented in three different economic regions (RECs) including EAC, COMESA and ECOWAS. This is a good opportunity for women in business in respective RECs to penetrate markets of other RECs, EAC head of delegation considers.
After the consultation meetings the EAC Secretariat wants to continue and work with Member States to form country teams that will help in collection of information to upload into the platform. The Ministry of Gender in each country will be in charge of coordination.
Partners from all member states met, said to be excited and promised to give a full support to this innovative project.
A lot is being done by Member States to promote women’s economic empowerment despite some challenges; Gender Ministries’ representatives in each Partner States explained.
Governments have started disbursing funds to support women’s economic activities; initiatives which are currently contributing to increased employment, women’s capacity and resources power.
Youth enterprises are also being supported by Government’s funds to build youth’s capacity and reduce unemployment; Gender Ministries’ representatives continued.
All stakeholders met are confident that the contribution of the 50MWS Project on the top of already existing efforts; will contribute to reduce to zero gender inequalities that were observed across the countries.
Meeting attendants expressed some concerns that can prevent the project from achieving its goal; those include the weak smart phone penetration in most of EAC countries and the sustainability of the Project.
The EAC Secretariat finds these concerns relevant but assured them that EAC has developed a communications Strategy to make sure that even the women using the feature phones in the rural areas are reached by information circulated by the platform.
On the concern of sustainability, Wilson Muyenzi, the 50MWS Project Coordinator says that COMESA, the Project coordinating REC, is commissioning soon studies, to come up with mechanisms of sustainability.
Partner States sincerely thanked EAC Secretariat for this initiative and reiterated again countries’ commitment to support the project.
“Once our women will be economically empowered, the capacity of our countries will be doubled, and economic development will be a reality,’’ Mary Makoffu, EAC Director of Social Sectors constantly explained to Stakeholders met.
-ENDS-
For more information, please contact:
Achel Bayisenge
Content Manager
50 Million African Women Speak, Networking Platform Project
EAC Secretariat
Mobile: +255786726230
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
About the East African Community Secretariat:
The East African Community (EAC) is a regional intergovernmental organisation of five Partner States, comprising Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, with its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
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