First Lady Margaret Kenyatta Monday reaffirmed her commitment to continue championing initiatives that will accelerate gender equality and women empowerment in Kenya.
The First Lady said she supports the removal of barriers preventing women and girls from realizing their full potential.
“We envisage a country where every woman and girl enjoys gender equality; a country where all legal, social and economic barriers that hinder the progress of women and girls are removed,” she said.
The First Lady spoke today at the high-level segment of the ongoing 2019 Global Gender Summit in Kigali, an event that that was also addressed by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and his Ethiopian counterpart Sahle-Work Zewde.
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The event was also addressed by Rwanda’s First Lady Jeannette Kagame, the President of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina and the Chairman of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat.
The biennial summit organized by the African Development Bank under the theme “unpacking constraints to gender equality”, is exploring mechanisms for scaling up innovative gender friendly financial solutions among other related subjects.
The Kenyan First Lady expressed optimism that the conference would help unlock the potential of women and girls to enable them contribute effectively to the realization Africa’s development agenda.
“This is the spirit of Africa’s vision towards accelerating its path to sustainable socio-economic development. Our collective commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ is a new chapter in our struggle towards achieving gender equality,” First Lady Margaret Kenyatta said.
She highlighted her advocacy work on maternal and child health through the Beyond Zero initiative saying access to basic healthcare, good nutrition and wellness is critical to transforming the lives of a country’s citizens.
The First Lady said through her interaction with Kenyan women, she had witnessed the transformative nature of women entrepreneurs through Saving and Credit Co-operatives (Saccos) and women groups locally known as ‘chamas’.
“And I am convinced that women would apply similar principles to influence equitable re-distribution of resources to support health, education and social welfare in a country,” she said.
The First Lady singled out lack of access to credit, low representation in decision making positions, lack of control over productive land and lack of financial control to make spending decisions on education and health as some of the impediments to gender equality.
To address some of those challenges, the First Lady said the Kenyan government took pro-women affirmative actions including the establishment of the Women’s Enterprise Fund that has enhanced women’s access to capital to run businesses.
She said the Kenyan government also established the “Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO)”, program where 30 percent of all government procurement opportunities are set aside for women owned enterprises, the youth and persons with disability.
“Economic empowerment allows women to participate in decision making at the household levels. Eliminating these financial bottlenecks has transformed families and communities,” the First Lady said.
Alongside the empowerment programmes, First Lady Margaret Kenyatta said Kenya has put in place national policies for the elimination of obstetric fistula and eradication of female genital mutilation by 2022.
“At the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD25) Summit held in Nairobi a few weeks ago, I declared my commitment to championing the eradication of FGM by 2022 and today reaffirm this commitment,” the First Lady said.
Speaking at the opening of the summit, President Kagame called for a change of mindset to make narrowing of the gender gap everybody’s responsibility not only in Africa but across the world.
“Whenever a woman gains, everybody gains and nobody loses,” President Kagame said.
On his part, AfDB President Adesina outlined the measures taken by the continental multilateral development financial institution to increase women’s access to credit at friendly terms so as to ensure their financial inclusion.
