Category: Publications
BASELINE SURVEY REPORT: AMPLIFYING THE VOICES OF GIRLS AND YOUNG WOMEN IN GOVERNANCE.
BASELINE SURVEY REPORT: AMPLIFYING THE VOICES OF GIRLS AND YOUNG WOMEN IN GOVERNANCE.
By Regional Network Of The Children and Young People Trust (RNCYPT) with support from African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF)
The Amplifying the Voices of Girls and Young Women in Governance project is a ten month African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) funded initiative that is implemented by Regional Network of the Children and Young People Trust (RNCYPT). The project began in December 2015, and the baseline study was conducted in January-February 2016, by means of Questionnaire and focus groups discussions; and covered targeted project areas that are Chinhoyi, Chitungwiza, Kadoma, Mvurwi and Raffingora.
Unlocking the Doors. Feminist Insights for Inclusion in Governance, Peace and Security
Unlocking the Doors. Feminist Insights for Inclusion in Governance, Peace and Security
By: Dr. Awino Okech
This is the third in a series of three African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) primers entitled Feminist Perspectives on Governance, Peace and Security. The primers are intended to:
1. Offer a review of the major debates on women, governance, peace and security in Africa.
2. Review and analyse women’s movements’ interventions in governance, peace and security.
3. Offer a set of policy and advocacy priorities based on political and practical realities.
4. Benefit women’s rights activists, organisations and people in government at the frontline of local and national mobilization initiatives seeking to enhance women’s leadership.
5. Assist in building alliances and structuring support across various institutions working towards enhancing women’s political participation.
This is the third primer in the series. It analyses the successes and gaps in women’s movements’ approaches to the intersections between governance and the security complex. These insights are based on AWDF’s analysis of some of the major challenges confronting movement building in the areas of governance, peace and security. With these primers, our objective is to re position feminist politics as a fundamental expression of accountability to our cause and constituencies, and to provide an opportunity for advancing individual and collective learning.
Statecraft and Pursuing Women’s Rights in Africa
Statecraft and Pursuing Women’s Rights in Africa
By: Dr. Awino Okech
This is the first in a series of three African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) primers entitled Feminist Perspectives on Governance, Peace and Security. The primers are intended to:
1. Offer a review of the major debates on women, governance, peace and security in Africa.
2. Review and analyse women’s movements’ interventions in governance, peace and security.
3. Offer a set of policy and advocacy priorities based on political and practical realities.
4. Benefit women’s rights activists, organisations and people in government at the front line of local and national mobilisation initiatives seeking to enhance women’s leadership.
5. Assist in building alliances and structuring support across various institutions working towards enhancing women’s political participation.
This particular primer maps key areas of feminist analysis and intervention in governance. Based on existing research on the major factors that hinder women’s political participation, emphasis is placed on electoral systems, political parties, quotas and national constitutional mechanisms. These are also areas where the impact of the women’s rights movement has been felt. This primer therefore assesses the ways in which women’s participation in governance has been assured, the challenges arising from these approaches, and lessons therein. This primer is intended to benefit women’s rights activists and organisations at the frontline of local and national mobilisation initiatives that seek to enhance women’s leadership. We hope the primer is useful for building alliances and structuring support across various institutions working towards enhancing women’s political participation.
Health and Reproductive Rights Portfolio: A look back at the last 14 years of thematic grantmaking and recommendations for moving forward
Health and Reproductive Rights Portfolio: A look back at the last 14 years of thematic grantmaking and recommendations for moving forward
In an effort to ensure that the HRR thematic area remains relevant to women’s needs and reflect current and emerging issues that affect health and reproductive rights of women in Africa, AWDF commissioned an independent consultant (Ms. Everjoice J. Win) to conduct an evaluation of the thematic HRR area.
This report is an abridged version of the findings from that assessment. To obtain a full copy of the evaluation, please contact Ms. Zeytuna Abdella Feyissa-Azasoo, the M&E Specialist at AWDF. The overall objectives of the HRR evaluation were:
To document and assess the work of AWDF in this thematic area, examining the relevance of selected priorities;
To understand major challenges that have contributed to low patronage of the thematic area and suggest improvements;
To identify current and emerging HRR issues of importance to African women.
Grants Making for Women’s Rights: Lessons Learnt.
Grants Making for Women’s Rights: Lessons Learnt.
This report is an Abridged Evaluation of AWDF’s work. It focuses on the Projects completed under Comic Relief grant.
The purpose of the evaluation was to evaluate the project performance, identify good practices and draw out lessons that can be applied in future interventions. As the Comic Relief grant supported AWDF’s Strategic Plan, the evaluation looked at AWDF’s main areas of work and assessed the role of the Comic Relief grant within which the AWDF initiatives were conducted. The evaluation coincided with AWDF’s Strategic Plan midway point. Findings from the evaluation were also used to inform AWDF’s subsequent decision-making processes.
Forward with Health & Reproductive Rights in Africa : An Evaluation
Forward with Health & Reproductive Rights in Africa : An Evaluation
The AWDF convened a round table meeting with some
of our grantees and partners on 30 June 2015 in
Arusha, Tanzania. We met to discuss the evaluation of
our Health and Reproductive Rights (HRR) Portfolio,
which was completed in October 2014. The evaluation
gave us the opportunity to review the progress and
challenges in civil society efforts to advance women’s
sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
Following the evaluation, the objective of the meeting
was to identify strategic interventions to help scale up
and sustain our impact on the ground. We also wanted
to identify more effective ways to influence policies
around (SRHR) at local, national and regional levels.
This report contains the key findings of the convening.
5th Chief Executive Officers Forum Report, AUGUST 2015
5th Chief Executive Officers Forum Report, AUGUST 2015
AWDF’s 5th CEO Forum on Leadership and Communications for Women Leaders of Women’s Rights Organisations in Africa took place in Nairobi, Kenya between 10 -12 August 2015. The three-day convening brought together 21 vibrant women executives from 8 organisations across Africa, including Botswana, Zambia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana. The program featured two main facilitators, Hope Chigudu and Paula Fray, who will serve as coaches leading the participants through a 10-month coaching program following the forum. Over the years, the focus of the CEO Forum has deepened and expanded. The forum and coaching program are also growing just as the participants are also developing their leadership and communications portfolio.
With each forum, the experience shared by the organisers and participants pushes the Capacity Building Program to take risks and try new and different processes. So, the forum and coaching program are interactive and responsive, shifting and changing over time like the women leaders who take part. Through this process, the Capacity Building Program is creating a unique framework that promotes African feminist leadership and coaching as a model for implementation for women’s rights organisations throughout Africa and, potentially, around the world. The idea is to mobilise more resources to support African women and organisations to build a compelling leadership practice that infuses the whole organisation. This can provide routes for the democratisation of leadership among staff and board members, so that human resource talents and skills can be adequately tapped and utilised for greater viability of the organisation. This can provide much needed support to the CEO and senior management team. With feminist leadership, leaders are built to carry the vision of the organisation into the future.
Bringing Gender Dimensions back from Obscurity
Bringing Gender Dimensions back from Obscurity
Introduction
Attempts to address the gender dimensions of governance, peace and security in Africa are often
plagued by several undermining tendencies. One tendency is that gender and, derived from this,
women’s concerns are presented as a standalone issue by an active women’s movement. This is done
without thorough engagement with the entire peace, security and governance environment. Mainstream
peace and security processes generally deal with gender and the women’s agenda as a peripheral
issue. They relegate it to the shadows of the governance and security debate. Policy interventions
aimed at achieving gender related transformation in peace and security have not delivered meaningful
change on the ground.
This policy paper discusses this disconnect between policy, scholarship and activism and the reality
on the ground; and its underlying causes. It makes proposals for relocating gender considerations in
mainstream governance, peace and security discourse and practice. Ultimately, the hope is that this
might begin to bring a systematic shift in the way all parties address gender issues. As such, this paper
brings several interrelated issues into focus:
● The relationship between governance, peace and security.
● The value of examining processes through which state and society forge a common understanding
around the protection of their citizens – and the place of gender in this. A key question is: why does
gender inequality remain relegated to the background while other issues occupy the foreground
of national conversation?
● The opportunities peace and security processes provide for reform of security governance in favour
of excluded citizens, particularly women, who are often at the receiving end of gender inequality.
The paper highlights the role of policy frameworks such as UN Security Council Resolution 1325.
● The constituency of actors who can help elevate the gender equality agenda as articulated in
Resolution 1325 in the policy and decision making arena.
● Despite efforts, the failure to achieve transformation in society and change for women toward
gender equality.
The summary section of this paper above includes three sets of recommendations for analysts, policy
practitioners and women’s organisations and activists.
Policy paper by: Dr Fumni Olonisakin
Bringing Gender Dimensions back from Obscurity (web version)17_12_15
Feminist Organizing for Women’s human rights in Africa: Current and Emerging issues
Feminist Organizing for Women’s human rights in Africa: Current and Emerging issues
Introduction
There have been some significant gains for women in Africa over the past 15 to 20 years. Women are taking positions of leadership in increasing numbers in political, economic, legal and social fields. In Rwanda, women constitute 64% in parliament, ranking it as the leading nation globally for representation by women in a legislature. In 2005, Africa witnessed the first woman president with the election of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia. In 2011, we had the second woman president, President Joyce Banda. There is legislation in countries such as Ghana, Kenya and South Africa against domestic and other forms of gender based violence. In 2010, the African Union (AU), launched the Decade for Women.
While these achievements are welcome, there is still a big deficit in implementation of key international and national policies and laws. Thirty years after the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), many girls and women still do not have equal opportunities to realise their rights as recognised in law.
The report below examines this in depth.
Policy Paper by: Everjoice Win
Feminist Organizing for Women’s Human Rights in Africa (final web version)
AWDF Women’s Economic Empowerment Policy Brief
AWDF Women’s Economic Empowerment Policy Brief
[tp lang=”en” not_in=”fr”]The African Women’s Development Fund’s (AWDF) Women’s Economic Empowerment Policy Brief is an outcomes document of our economic empowerment and livelihoods convening in Cape Town in 2013, where participants raised critical issues and contributions around the theme, and how they affect women’s economic participation, empowerment and livelihoods in Africa. This document also serves as an important reference point for a deeper understanding of the AWDF thematic area and the work our organisation does in promoting African women’s economic and livelihood development.
Download the Policy Brief here: AWDF EEL Policy Brief[/tp]
[tp lang=”fr” not_in=”en”]La note de synthèse sur l’autonomisation économique des femmes du Fonds Africain de Développement de la Femme documente sur le rassemblement de 2013 au Cap, qui portait sur les résultats de notre émancipation économique et de nos moyens de subsistance. A cette occasion les participants ont soulevé des questions critiques et apporté des contributions à ce thème, et sur comment ils affectent la participation économique des femmes, l’autonomisation et les moyens de subsistance en Afrique. Ce document sert également de point de référence important pour une compréhension plus profonde de la zone thématique d’AWDF et le travail de notre organisation qui fait la promotion du développement économique et des moyens de subsistance des femmes africaines.
Télécharger le dossier de synthèse ici: AWDF EEL Policy Brief[/tp]