By Gift Briton
With over 30 participants from various project teams in attendance, and nearly all grantees represented, GrOW-East Africa’s second convening was held virtually on 27 February 2024.
The meeting organized by Science Africa, which supports the project grantees with their communication needs had one main objective- for grantees to share their experiences, success stories, challenges, and opportunities with other project partners.
Three organizations, Includovate, Pro Femmes Twese Hamwe, and Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC), shared their experiences.
Celia Loudia, Junior Program Manager, Includovate.
Celia Loudia, Junior Program Manager, presented on behalf of Includovate. The Includovate project seeks to tackle issues around women’s economic empowerment and unpaid care burden by influencing policy change in Ethiopia.
Loudia said Includovate has established an online knowledge base platform called Teyaki, where anyone can access information on income systems and related information about women’s economic empowerment and unpaid care.
She noted that numerous people are using Teyaki to access information, with some beneficiaries saying that the platform has been critical in easing their research project work. Information on the Teyaki platform is available in English and Amharic languages.
She added that Includovate has carried out knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) surveys, stakeholder mapping, validation workshops, and three literature reviews on advocacy, unpaid care, and women’s economic empowerment.
In their research, Includovate found a negative correlation between a woman’s housework time, resource access, and traditional gender norms. The literature also established that extensive childhood and household work hours in developing countries contribute to lower pay and increased gender income gaps. They recommended that national strategies for women’s empowerment should target education, working capital, and employment opportunities.
Includovate, alongside its partner organization, is also leading the translation of policy analysis.
Loudia also mentioned that they have established a coalition called Care4change coalition. Care4change is a collaboration of NGOs, advocates, organizations, and individuals that share lessons that drive transformative change in Ethiopia around women’s economic empowerment and tackling unpaid care work.
Other ongoing tasks under this project include training on unpaid care, domestic work, and women’s economic empowerment. The first training was concluded in the second week of February 2024. The training modules are based on the KAP survey, which assesses government officials’ knowledge, attitude, and practices on women’s economic empowerment and unpaid care work.
One of the concerns was the use of the term care work, which appears to be controversial in Ethiopia. However, Loudia acknowledged that Includovate and its partners are making ongoing efforts to relook at it and other terms that may cause controversy in the country, including feminism.
Ernest Bucyayungura presented on behalf of Pro-Femmes/Twese Hamwe. He said the project aims to ensure that Rwanda’s Investment Policy is gender responsive and provides equal opportunities to women and men in all investment sectors.
PRO-FEMMESTWESE HAMWE
and ACTION AID RWANDA –
Supporting Policy Action For Enhancing Women Economic Opportunities Project
He noted that the Rwandan Policy did not include any gender institution among the implementing partners. Among other shortcomings, the Policy was also not known among most gender institutions, advocates, and experts.
Bucyayungura shared the project’s success stories, which helped them influence the review of the Rwanda Investment Policy to become gender-responsive. Pro-Femmes/Twese Hamwe analyzed the Policy and then formulated a call for a policy review to influence the review. The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning agreed to their call to revise the policy and accepted the organization’s input.
The organization continues to work with the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning to formulate gender mainstreaming strategies.
A draft of the simplified manual on the national investment policy is available. Policy advocacy meetings are also being conducted in critical ministries to discuss the need for a gender mainstreaming strategy in the investment sector. The Policy will be translated into Kinyarwanda before dissemination.
One of the organization’s challenges is limited implementation time given the government bureaucracy, which leads to inadequate engagement with critical ministries in the development process of the Gender Mainstreaming Strategy.
Pro-Femmes/Twese Hamwe recommends that civil society organizations monitor policy processes to ensure that they cater to the needs of their interest groups.
Bucyayungura attributed the organization’s success in influencing the Policy review to close collaboration and coordination with government consultants in critical ministries and cooperation with the private sector federation.
The organization also trained journalists on gender equality and women’s empowerment so that they could mainstream gender in their reporting.
Gaaba Lakel Maria shared AFIC’s experiences. AFIC’s project focused on understanding the barriers and solutions to including women-led businesses in East Africa. It started with a research phase in five countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda.
The research found high percentages of registered women-led businesses across East Africa and various local innovations and initiatives to overcome challenges. For instance, they were pooling resources to tender financing in Rwanda and Uganda.
However, there were no affirmative laws and policies in favour of women-led businesses at the time of research in Ethiopia and Rwanda, and those laws were not further implemented in the countries where they existed.
Science Africa team at the 2nd GrOW-EA virtual convening
Accordingly, AFIC embarked on advocacy, presenting findings and recommendations to key stakeholders and sharing comparative practices from other countries. AFIC also actively engaged the media.
They published reports and policy briefs and shared the publications with journalists. They are also involved in social media campaigns, political leaders’ engagement, capacity building of stakeholders, including women-led businesses, and outreach to policymakers.
These efforts, Lakel said, yielded several desired outcomes, including strengthened legal frameworks and law enforcement. For instance, in Tanzania, the procurement authority presented a new bill, which was approved in September 2023.
According to her, the project also contributed to developing draft guidelines for reserving women-led businesses and other interest groups, such as people with disabilities, in Uganda.
In Rwanda, the parliament is using the research findings by AFIC to amend procurement laws to provide for an inclusiveness increase in women’s participation in government tenders and waivers for loan security requirements.
AFIC reported that Ethiopia is in the process of amending its procurement laws, including women’s participation in public procurement. A draft is also in Uganda to establish the legal definition of women-led business, one of the critical gaps identified by AFIC.
To a broader extent, AFIC attributes its work to the positive policy changes in the region. They attribute these successes to the power of compelling evidence, engaging stakeholders with evidence of existing challenges, the right timing, and identifying the right power holders to work with.
However, the organization experienced challenges engaging with parliament members during the budget season and had to wait for that season to pass.
In her closing remarks, Dr. Mulema expressed delight at seeing policymakers use evidence developed in the GrOW. She encouraged all organizations to track how change is happening and some of the things that contribute to that change, noting that “one of the mandates of GrOW is to ensure that the evidence we put out there gets used. I urged the teams to work closely with the research teams in their respective countries so that we make use of the evidence this project is generating so that we do not work in silos.”
