Women in African Politics Confab Slated Nov 28

By Abigail Annoh

The Second African Culture and Sustainable Development Conference has been launched in Accra to help spur actions at pushing Africa's development agenda through cultural perspective.

Scheduled for November 28 to 30, the three-day event will focus on promoting women active participation in African politics in relation to building positive cultural practices.

Organised by Culture and Development Advocates International (CDAI), a non-governmental organisation, the seminar is on the theme: 'Women in African politics: Determination and inhibition.'

Chief Executive Officer of CDAI, Donkor Fuseini, addressing the media, deplored the many treaties and accords signed by the country on promoting women participation in national discourse with little results achieved, "perhaps we have not looked at harnessing the interrelations of such ideas with our cultural practices".

"Strengthening women's participation in all spheres of life has become a major issue in the discourse of economic and social development in the last decade. Virtually every international and bilateral development agency has proclaimed policies to integrate women's interest into socio-economic processes," he observed.

According to Mr. Fusieni, who is also the immediate past District Chief Executive of Sekyere Afram Plains in the Ashanti Region, the three-day event would play host to both local and international speakers on how to harness Africa's democracy from the lens of positive cultural practices.

"We would seek to highlight the importance of participation of women in African politics as well as other critical issues that bother on interrelations of the African culture," he explained.

Mr. Fuseini mentioned some topics to be dissected at the seminar including "female child education in Africa and cultural inhibitions, politics in Africa economy, the rural woman and overcoming the barriers to economic empowerment," among others.

He called for collaborative efforts to weed out negative cultural practices that inhibit women drive to climb higher on the socio-political ladder saying, "when we have enough women in our political space, we should be able to shape our democracy to achieve better results."

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