Female professionals largely absent from projects
Professor Sheila Okoth of the University of Nairobi's School of Biological Sciences knows too well that she would not be where she is today were it not for her zeal and strong desire to rise up the career ladder.
As she was growing up, she saw how women in Kenya were unfairly treated in the society. They were seen but not heard. They were despised, and even with the right academic qualifications, they weren't allowed to compete with men. To African society then, women were nothing but just objects to sire children.
Okoth says most of her university female classmates ended up getting married almost immediately after their first degree due to the fear that they might never get husbands if they continued their schooling.
"With marriage came more responsibilities. As a result, women's education would naturally go down the drains." Today, Okoth is one of the finest African women researchers, specializing in Aflatoxin, a toxic substance that contaminates maize.
With the wave of affirmative action sweeping across Kenya, Rwanda and other African countries, Okoth says women stand a bigger chance of rising up the career ladder, and bring change that Africa yearns for.
The September 1995 World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, China. The gathering reaffirmed its commitment to the equal rights of women and men, ensuring the implementation of the rights of women and of the girl child as an integral part of all human rights and the empowerment of women, thereby guaranteeing them the possibility of realizing their full potential in society.
The Beijing meeting laid a firm foundation that has seen some countries like Rwanda make great strides in promoting gender equality, driven by a solid commitment by the government. Now, gender equality is enshrined in the constitution and Rwanda was the first country in the world to have more than 50 percent female members of parliament. The country that lost about 1 million people in the 1994 genocide was an equal second in the world on the 2009 Social Watch Gender Equity Index, with only Sweden having a higher score.
"These developments are impressive. But they are not sufficient. We aspire to see African women shift their ambitions from within national borders to global levels," says Jemimah Makau, a woman rights activist and lawyer in Nairobi.
Makau says women in Africa can be internationally exposed not just through further education, conferences and seminars but also through day-to-day interactions with their peers from different countries. That way, she says, this "weak" gender can also play the primary function of propelling Africa to the higher level of development.
"The coming of the Chinese in African countries would have been the perfect platform for this," she says. Yet, this has not been the case. In Angola, for instance, it is estimated that there are more than 200,000 Chinese. Yet this population is overwhelmingly male.
This observation was made recently when Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta launched a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Standard Gauge Railway connecting Nairobi and Mombasa by a Chinese firm. One of the speakers at the function called on the Chinese firms to not only come into Africa with their finest kind of technologies and brains but also their "ribs," a Biblical reference meaning women.
"We appreciate the fact that China is our big brother. It is also a country that has made tremendous development that Africans can learn from. China is surely transforming African countries. But as women, we would like to be at the frontline in shaping China-Africa friendship. However, we have to do this with our counterparts; the Chinese women," says Fatuma Mpogolo, a university lecturer.
Mpogolo says so far there has been limited interaction between African and Chinese women since most of the Chinese companies entering Africa have failed to bring with them female professionals such as engineers, architects, doctors, teachers, among others.
It is through female experts that African women can exchange ideas, says Mpogolo, and therefore boost the thriving cooperation between China and Africa. Today, most of the African women are still left at the periphery of development, yet they have the potential to turn around the continent's fortunes.
Vincent Kiprotich, who researches China-Africa cooperation, says there is a strong evidence that the proposed exchange of ideas and knowledge between women of these two regions would have a positive impact on Africa's development. "What men can do, women can equally do anything, perhaps even better," he says.
Kiprotich says African countries can start exchange programs, bringing in a group of female experts from China, who then will spend ample time with their counterparts in Africa.
It is an approach that has proved to work in research between the two regions, such as programs carried out under the China-Africa Joint Research and Exchange plan, launched in March 2010 with the goal of "friendly feelings between Chinese and African peoples and deepening the new-type strategic partnership between China and Africa."
As long as women are empowered, and given opportunities to serve in leadership positions, African countries will be empowered in turn, observes Okoth.
