African Leaders Should Do More To Unleash Tremendous Potential Of African Women, Girls – Says Ban

UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon on Friday in Addis Ababa, said African leaders need to do more to “unleash the tremendous potential of Africa’s women and girls.”


Ban said this in his remarks at the 24th African Union Summit with the theme: Women’s Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s agenda 2063.

The UN Chief in his speech to correspondents in New York, said women must be at the centre of all our development plans.

“Africa is home to Parliaments and Cabinets with the world’s highest percentage of women members.

But we have much more work to do to unleash the tremendous potential of Africa’s women and girls.

“They need better access to secondary education, decent work and economic opportunities.

“They need more help to combat maternal mortality and poverty, and genital mutilation. They need more protection from the scourge of violence at the hands of men and boys,” he said.

Gender equality and the empowerment of women, Ban said, are at the heart of the AU’s Agenda 2063, which he hoped that the leaders would formally adopt at the summit.

`Women and girls cannot wait. Neither can Africa and the wider world.

“ While I appreciate and support Agenda 2063, I would strongly call and urge all of you when it comes to women’s rights, to make a deep and lasting difference to the lives of African women and girls by 2020,” he said.

He said further, “Last month, I travelled to the Ebola-affected countries of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mali.

“I thank African governments and the African people for their support and solidarity and generous contributions.

“We are seeing clear signs of progress. I urge the international community to commit more resources at this critical time”.

He said the outbreak showed the risk that fragile health systems pose for our interconnected world.

“Affordable, quality healthcare must be a central feature of Africa’s development agenda.

“The remarkable success of polio eradication and efforts to combat AIDS across the continent show what we can achieve by acting together,” he said. (NAN)