Yesterday, several of my colleagues and I attended the opening ceremony of AMwA’s Regional African Women’s Leadership Institute (AWLI) held in Ghana. The theme for this AWLI was ‘African Women’s Leadership and gender responsive poverty reduction strategies’ and the keynote speaker was the Honourable Hajia Alima Mahama. Now those of you who read my blogs know that I was rather excited about the possibility of Ghana’s first woman vice president and Hajia Mahama had been the woman most cited as being likely to fill that post. For those of you who follow politics in Ghana you will know that Hajia was not chosen as the NPP’s Vice Presidential nominee but the post went to the deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana, a man whose name I don’t even know or remember…prior to his nomination and rumours of his nomination about a week ago the deputy governor was a complete unknown in Ghanaian political circles so the question that was on my lips the entire time Hajia gave her keynote address was ‘How does she feel about not being picked as the Vice-President nominee for the NPP?’ and that was the question I posed in the Q&A session that followed. I have to confess, I did ask myself ‘is this a wise question to ask, after all it is an extremely political question and maybe this is not the right forum during which to pose the question’, but I thought ‘when else am I going to get this opportunity, and surely this is topical at the opening ceremony of a leadership institute which is grooming women to attain positions of leadership in all sectors of society’. So I posed a question and I got an answer which was simple and felt heartfelt. Hajia’s response which I am paraphrasing was ‘I felt disappointed, I had been one of the forerunners for the last few months and in the end I get told that Ghana is not ready for a woman Vice-President’. Part of what was really nice about the entire event was not only that Hajia answered questions openly and honestly but that she was there for the entire event including cocktails afterwards. It was good to interact with the staff of AMwA and put faces to emails as well as meeting some of the promising women taking part in this year’s AWLI.

The other highlight of AWwA’a opening ceremony was also the honouring of 3 Ghanaian women for their leadership and contribution to changing the lives of their communities. The awardees were Abigail Burgesson, Senior Manager, Special Programs at AWDF, Angela Dwamena-Aboagye, Executive Director of The Ark Foundation and Gladys Asmah, Minister for the Ministry for Fisheries who was also the very first Minister for the Ministry of Women and Children in Ghana. Congratulations to all awardees!!!

Nana Sekyiamah
Programme Officer
Fundraising & Communications