By Iminza Keboge
Published July 21, 2019
If given access to education, finance, assets and decision making, African women can contribute to finding solutions to the vagaries of climate change besides driving the continent’s renewable energy industry.
Research, according to African Development Bank (AfDB), shows that when women are involved in decision making, agreements on the environment are more likely to be ratified and projects around natural resources, such as water, are more likely to succeed.
“When you empower women in the context of climate change you empower a family, a community and a country,” says Dana Elhassan, senior gender expert at AfDB, an institution that allocates international funds to development projects. “You cannot solve a problem with half the team. A lot of the unpaid work that women do, such as collecting firewood and water, and caring for the family, are massively affected by climate change – so we have to make sure adaptation initiatives address their needs, vulnerabilities and potential.”
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Saying that ratification of multilateral agreements on the environment are more likely when women are part of decision making, Mafalda Duarte, head of one of the largest climate financing instruments in the world–the US$8.3 billion Climate Investment Fund–argues there is strong evidence that women play a vital role in dealing with disasters by mobilising communities – something that will become increasingly important as climate change advances.
“Discourse is quite tilted to considering women as victims of climate change – but we are agents of change and if we are perceived as such this will make a big difference,” says Duarte. “Our empowerment represents greatly underutilised opportunities to build our economies and tackle climate change.”
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Quoting a McKinsey study that, it says, found that if women were participating economically as much as men, they would be adding 28 trillion dollars to global GDP by 2025, AfDB contends that unlocking African women’s ingenuity and giving them access to finance could generate technological advancements that help deal with climate change.
“If we women are given the right platforms, we will achieve the change we wish to see in the world,” says Duarte.
Women are the backbone of African economies, accounting for a majority of small- and medium-sized businesses and dominating the agriculture sector as primary producers and food processors.
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