Davos: African economies essentially rely on women

This post by Angela Luci first appeared on Gender Debate.

Guinea’s president Alpha Condé, who came to this year’s World Economic Forum at Davos before participating at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, discusses the crisis of capitalism and new business models for Africa. He sees giving women better access to micro-credits and therewith enhancing their economic empowerment as a major step towards more economic and social development in Africa.

                                                           image: www.genderdebate.com

Alpha Condé said to “Le Monde”:

“L’Afrique a des problèmes très concrets. La base de notre développement c’est l’agriculture : il faut d’abord donner à manger. L’énergie est aussi un problème, car sans énergie on ne peut pas développer un pays. L’éducation, la santé, le rôle des nouvelles technologies. En Afrique, nous devons essayer de mettre en commun notre politique pour l’énergie, les infrastructures, le commerce intérieur. […] Il faut donner une nouvelle image de l’Afrique. Une des tares de l’Afrique, qu’on nous reproche beaucoup, c’est la corruption. Il faut d’abord agir sur la gouvernance,  appliquer la transparence, et que les ressources de l’Afrique profitent réellement aux populations africaines, particulièrement aux femmes et aux jeunes. […] L’économie africaine, pour l’essentiel, repose sur les femmes. L’homme peut  émigrer, laisser les enfants, mais la femme est obligée de rester pour donner à manger aux enfants. Ensuite, les femmes sont plus honnêtes. Quand vous donnez du micro-crédit, le taux de remboursement chez les femmes est de 90 %. Le développement de certains secteurs, comme l’artisanat, repose sur les femmes. Notre objectif c’est de transformer  le secteur informel productif en PME. Les femmes sont plus honnêtes, plus sensibles, plus travailleuses, mais elles n’ont pas assez accès au crédit. »

“Africa has very concrete problems. The basis of our development is agriculture: it is first necessary to have enough food resources. Energy is also a problem because without energy you cannot develop a country. Education, health and new technologies also play an important role. In Africa, we must try to harmonize our policy for energy, infrastructure and internal trade. [...] We must give a new image to Africa. One of the flaws of Africa we are accused of is corruption. We must first develop governance, apply transparency, and make sure that the resources of Africa actually benefit the African people, especially women and young people. [...]
The African economy essentially relies on women. Man may emigrate and leave children, but women are obliged stay to raise their children. In addition, women are more honest. For micro-credits, the reimbursement rate for women is 90%. The development of certain sectors, such as handicrafts, is primarily based on women. Our goal is to transform the productive informal sector into small and medium businesses. Women are more honest, more sensitive, harder working, but they do not have enough access to credit.”

Source: Le Monde, 31/01/2012

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Empowering women by microfinance!?

See more and contribute to the Wikigender article on Women and African Economic Development

Empowering women by microfinance!?

This post first appeared on Gender Debate.


Against the background of an increasing feminization of poverty in the developing world, microfinance programs represent important means for promoting women’s empowerment. However, most of these programs are only focussed on individual and purely economic empowerment but do not involve full and equal participation of women in all spheres of society. In order to improve the effectiveness of microfinance programs for women, it is necessary to integrate a societal and political dimension which enables women to participate in decision-making processes above and beyond the family context.


A report by Alexandra Dobra, published in the “International Politics and Society” journal of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, depicts important limits of microfinance programs for women:


According to the Microcredit Summit 2005, women represent 70 percent of individuals living on less than 1 us dollar a day. Not only do women represent the major part of the poorest individuals, but in addition they are also the most vulnerable.


Microfinance programs have proven to be important instruments to fight against female poverty and vulnerability in developing countries. Among the 81.9 million poor clients served by microfinance programs in 2005, 84.2 percent were women (World Bank 2005). Microfinance, by targeting women, allows not only improvements in gender equality but also effective decreases in poverty through the positive effect of gender equality on development.

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Using microfinance programs to give women access to financial 
services is a means of mobilizing their productive capacities for the 
benefit of economic development. Through access to financial resources, 
microfinance not only gives women access to self-employment, but also 
contributes to the amelioration of family life and influences the social
 situation of women by promoting self-confidence and the capacity to 
play an active role in society. Moreover, extrapolating from household 
expenditure by working women it appears that women are more inclined to 
be altruistic and spend most of their money on their families. In this 
way, the wellbeing of the whole family and society is improved.

Although the social dimension of microfinance enables the emergence of female empowerment, the latter is too underdeveloped. In most instances, microfinance programs only enhance personal empowerment but do not involve full and equal participation of women in all spheres of society, including decision-making and access to power. In most developing countries, women are for example still largely under-presented in politics.


In order to improve their effectiveness of the empowerment process, microfinance programs must try to enhance their contextual adaptation and the political dimension. Therefore, the preponderance of the economic dimension of microfinance has to be reduced. Policy intervention is needed especially when it comes to improve women’s societal status. Action plans should reinforce women’s rights by stepping up the fight against sexual discrimination, by accelerating the politicization of women and by tackling patriarchal norms. Hereby, increasing women’s education and wage income is an important milestone. By these means, microfinance programs can go beyond their current embryonic stage of development and promote a “mentoring” function for women with a stronger focus on long term outputs.