African Gender and Development Index regional synthesis report: measuring gender equality and women’s empowerment in Africa

Abstract

The national African Gender and Development Index (AGDI) reports have confirmed that advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in Africa is still a major struggle that is shrouded in complex, intricate and myriad challenges including weak planning, institutional, monitoring and evaluation systems. To make it more difficult, there is inaccessibility of periodically updated data, lack of strong and receptive policy and legal environment, inadequate human development capacity as well as insufficient and weak structural arrangements to mainstream gender in the various sectors of development. To address this challenge, and to fulfill its mandate to report on Africa’s progress in implementing global gender equality and women’s empowerment instruments, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has developed the African Gender and Development Index. AGDI provides a policy and planning framework to monitor Africa’s progress in the implementation of global, regional and sub regional commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment. This report, therefore, presents the status of gender equality in the selected thirteen countries in Africa, highlighting the disparities between men and women in economic, social and political spaces. The report discusses progress made as well as challenges encountered by African Member States in their endeavors to implement national, regional and international instruments on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Following a pilot study in twelve African countries, namely: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda, the AGDI studies have been extended further to other thirteen countries in the African continent.