Enhancing African women's leadership: a personal perspective/Renforcement du leadership des femmes Africaines: une perspective personnelle.

• Author: Phiri, Pezo Mateo
• Position: Essay

Women are natural leaders, a common statement carrying a lot of truth. This is evidenced by the fact that when you leave a home to a twelve year girl as the leader, everything will be in place. However, leaving the home with a boy of the same age will most likely lead to disaster. In this example, we see the most important trait of leadership--responsibility. Responsibility is what we are always looking for when choosing leaders starting from family level to international level. A leader has to be responsible, lead by example, must be honest and hard working. In short, you must be like a mother chicken always providing refugee for everybody. This is the description of an African Woman.

Why then are women still lagging behind in terms of national leadership? As a researcher on Gender and Development, working with women from rural and urban areas, the educated and illiterate, and being an intrinsic advocate for women's leadership, am always searching for answers. Until we realize that the answer to this problem lies in us, the women, we shall not move forward.

Governments have done fairly in terms of putting in place legal and administrative measures to curb discrimination against women. Most constitutions are no longer discriminatory, international treaties protecting and promoting the civil and political rights of women such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the African Protocol on the Rights of Women, have been signed, ratified and domesticated in some countries.

The pioneer females in leadership have done great work and are merely corrupt, unlike the male counterparts. This should surely demonstrate that African women are ripe and their leadership capabilities cannot be questioned. The current female leaders in Africa must be saluted because they are paving the way for the younger women. This is an opportunity for the young women to seize and become leaders of our great continent. Being a youthful leader myself, I think it is easier now to take up leadership because most thorns have already been cleared by our mothers.

Recognising that there are still women who are still living in bondage and hence cannot take up leadership, the key to enhancing African Women's leadership is in the hands of the women themselves.

Research shows that to date the biggest hindrance to women's leadership in Africa is culture. The way the girl child is socialized in Africa and made to believe that she...