UN women collaborates with AU to reintroduce new strategies to advance gender equality in Africa.

UN Women Eastern and Southern Africa (ESARO) has partnered with other association to develop strategy to solve gender problems in Africa.

Following this, the ESARO with the UN Women Liaison Office to AU and the African Union Commission’s Women, Gender and Youth Directorate (WGDD) held a three-day meeting to advocate and mobilise resources on gender issues in Africa.

The representatives settled on drafting a joint Framework aligned with the African Union and the UN Women’s strategic priorities for Africa. 

“The Framework will take into consideration UN Women’s expertise and mandate as a global champion for women and girls and AU’s unique positioning and continent-wide access to African policymakers at the highest levels. The Framework is aligned with both organizations’ strategies on gender equality, in particular the WGYD Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Strategy and the UN Women Africa Strategy” the press statement indicated.

The representatives also decided on five key areas that should be added in the new ‘AU-UN Women Collaborative Framework’, particularly programmatic support on gender equality and women’s empowerment, resources and opportunities.

 During the meeting, UN Women and African Union in strengthening their strategic engagement on gender equality and women’s empowerment in Africa encouraged five years systematic engagement among themselves.

Deputy Chairperson for the African Union Commission, Dr. Monique Nsanzabaganwa commended the deliberate approach to leverage the respective institutions’ comparative advantages and imparted four key messages.

 “We must focus on the following things to achieve scale for the work we intend to do together, focus on the importance of shared valued partnerships, we must build an ecosystem of efficiency to connect the macro and the micro level interventions to make a difference at scale, we must implement game-changing initiatives and extend institutional, technical and financial support to each other for the partnership to be successful” Dr Nsanzabaganwa stated.

Moreover, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and UN Women Deputy Executive Director, Dr. Åsa Regnér reiterated UN Women’s continued support and system-wide collaboration with the AU Gender Directorate for the advancement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in Africa.

 Director of the AUC WGYD, MS. Prudence Ngwenya indicated that a collaborative framework is necessary to ensure the organisations deliver with impact and at scale.

“It is indeed an exciting time to work in the women and youth empowerment space and what has become abundantly clear is that collaboration is the best way to make our respective efforts reverberate across Africa. UN Women is a trusted partner of the AUC and as we enhance how we work this will be a beacon to other UN agencies who want to partner with us on transformative gender and youth programming,” she said during the meeting.

In addition, UN Women Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, Dr. Maxime Houinato stressed the need to have a cooperative document that showcases a “mutual commitment and accountability”, concentrating on key initiatives with women and the youth.