Revitalising FEMNET's National Focal Points/Revitalisation des Points Focaux Nationaux de FEMNET.

• Position: COMMUNICATION PROGRAMME/PROGRAMME COMMUNICATION

Many of will recall that during FEMNET's Fourth Programming Conference and General Assembly (PC/GA) held from 26th to 28 September 2007, we agreed that there is need to review and strengthen the relationship between the National Focal Point organisations and the Regional Secretariat. This will contribute to increasing FEMNET's capacity to link up more effectively with its membership in all the five sub-regions of North, South, East, West and Central Africa and further extend to countries where FEMNET's presence is not currently adequately covered.

And so as part of our strategic actions for the period 2008-2010, we plan to engage with the National Focal Point organizations in a more systematic manner. This will ensure continuous two- way communication and feedback between the Regional Secretariat and the sub-regional and National Focal Points and increase collaboration among the network members in-country on particularly agreed areas of intervention. This strategy will also improve FEMNET's capacity to mobilise resources within the region to support work on women's rights promotion. Obtaining national data on the progress made by different countries will also be made easy. Once focal points are reviewed this will result in a better grounding of the network and a higher visibility of FEMNET at the national and sub-regional levels. FEMNET aims to strengthen the infrastructure for and channels through which women NGOs can reach one another and share information, experiences and strategies so as to improve their input into agenda on women's development, equality and other women's human rights in Africa. The sub- regional and National Focal Points have to play a more central role to be able to achieve this.

However, over the years the linkage with the NFPs has weakened and this has made it difficult for Regional Secretariat to assess the impact of its activities and interventions on the quality of lives of women in Africa. The Network must be strongly rooted in the region and this is best achieved by strengthening its linkages with the different actors at both the sub-regional and national levels. With a membership spread out in over 26 countries in Africa as of December 2007, FEMNET's members desire to have a stronger connection with what is going on at the sub-regional, regional and international levels. Strengthening of the National level networks to feed into the regional network will lead to more effective interventions in diverse areas of...