Discussants at the World Economic Forum on Africa
Africa’s men should not pride in dominating women because this doesn’t mean they are smarter, President Paul Kagame has warned.
“Our problem is women are behind the men and the men are behind the rest of the world,” Kagame said during a panel discussion on Africa’s fourth Industrial Revolution at the World Economic Forum on Africa.
Discussants at the forum consider women as an important component in Africa’s fourth industrial revolution.
Kagame said, “We must work together. Women and men should be on the same level but differentiated by capacity and talent.”
Participants were drawn into applause when Graca Machel chipped in saying, “Our industry will never develop if we keep leaving women behind.”
Machel is the founder of New Faces New Voices-an African foundation promoting women financial inclusion among other rights.
During a conversation on partnerships and doing business in Africa, Howard Graham Buffett yesterday said that compared to other countries on the continent, Rwanda has solved the gender equality puzzle.
“Rwanda has done it. They quietly just knocked the ball out of the pack. there is no country in the world that compares to them. More than half of parliament (64%) deputies are female, half of the ministers and supreme court judges are female.”
Rwandan women have substantial representation in decision making organs and other sectors.
The Global Gender Gap Index 2015 ranked Rwanda the best place in Africa to be a woman. The country has laws granting extensive property rights to women, and key legislation on women in the workforce.
Previously Rwandan culture like in the rest of Africa considered women as housekeepers and bearing children.
At the ongoing World Economic forum for Africa, in Kigali, several discussions held have captured the aspect of women inclusion at all levels of the development process.
