Op-Ed Contributors

Let World Cup empower African women

By Graca Machel (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-08 07:46

But it is in women's treatment, deliberately and accidentally, by the financial sector that the most damage is done. Women receive, for example, only 10 percent of the credit given to small farmers and less than 1 percent of total loans to agriculture. Yet they are responsible for growing 80 percent of the food on our continent. Inheritance rules, dictating that land - and its proceeds - can be passed down only through the men of the family have put women at a terrible disadvantage.

Africa's potential not only to feed its own people but to export food around the world is increasingly and rightly acknowledged. But this ambition will be met only through policies that recognize the central role of women in agriculture and enable them to drive a green revolution on the continent.

Women's lack of assets, together with outdated social norms, is also a major barrier blocking their access to the capital they need to set up and expand small businesses. Women-run start-ups are most likely to become established enterprises. Yet they command less than 10 percent of the capital available for investment in new enterprises.

The discrimination continues despite overwhelming evidence showing that women are more likely to invest business loans wisely and to meet repayment schedules. Even micro-credit schemes often seem to lend less to women than to men in the same circumstances.

Nor are these problems limited to small businesses. The African Women's Economic Summit, which I attended recently in Nairobi, was electrified by the story of a woman who had set up her own construction firm in Cameroon. Her capital needs run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet, when dealing with financial institutions, she faced the same obstacles and outdated attitudes familiar to the smallest businesswomen across the continent.

Financial institutions must remove such barriers to fair and easy access to capital and financial services. For Africa to reach the growth rates needed to meet the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals, women must be brought fully into the formal economy and the financial sector.

This requires innovation in the financial services and products on offer, which in turn requires women - locally, regionally, and internationally - to help formulate the solutions. If governments and key stakeholders can lift the barriers that prevent women from playing their full role in our economies and societies, the future would be bright - not just for women but for our entire continent.

The author is a member of the Africa Progress Panel, president of the Foundation for Community Development and founder of New Faces, New Voices. She is married to Nelson Mandela.

(China Daily 06/08/2010 page9)