Keynote: Women’s Economic Participation in Africa: Re-imagining a prosperous future
Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area, His Excellency Wamkele Mene
All Permanent Secretaries present
Director General of the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Advocate Mikateko Maluleke
Director General of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, Mr Zane Dangor
Your excellencies, special advisors, experts and partners
Colleagues
Good morning,
1. Introduction
Programme Director,
On behalf of the Department of Women, Youth, and Persons, we extend warm and friendly greetings to every delegate attending the Southern African High-Level Consultative Forum on Advancing Gender-Transformative Economies in SADC and Africa as a whole.
My name is Sindisiwe Chikunga, and I am the Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities. We carry quite a significant mandate, and as such, we are constantly eager to draw lessons and insights from our key regional partners who themselves are involved in empowering and transitioning Women and Youth into catalysts for socio- economic change and impact.
We recognize this Consultative Forum as a timely platform from which a united voice of our Permanent Secretaries, Directors- General, and Senior Officials will paint a picture of a women-led and gender-responsive economic architecture we desire for ourselves, for future generations, for SADC, and for the continent.
We are fully aligned with the problem statement as articulated in the concept note of this consultative forum. It is true that women own fewer productive assets, their businesses have fewer opportunities to trade, they experience financial exclusion, and they have limited access to markets and procurement opportunities.
Key guiding frameworks: African Union Agenda 2063; SADC Vision 2050 and the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan.
Programme Director,
The objectives of this forum’s proceedings are aligned to key sections of the AU Agenda 2063 as they relate to the empowerment of women. Without concrete measures in place, our continent’s aspiration to ensure that the African woman is fully empowered in all spheres—with equal social, political, and economic rights, including the rights to own and inherit property, sign contracts, and register and manage businesses will remain unfulfilled. Similarly, rural women’s access to productive assets such as land, credit, inputs, and financial services will remain idle and futile without deliberate action.
Without a dedicated plan and political will to combat patriarchal forms of exploitation, our continent’s commitment to ensuring that “all forms of gender-based violence and discrimination (social, economic, political) against women and girls” are eradicated by 2063 will remain hollow.
Without a deliberate skills revolution, the desire to position our youth at the forefront of knowledge and as catalysts of innovation and entrepreneurship will fall short. Only when education and skills are accessible to all will we be able to cultivate the creativity, energy, and innovation of Africa’s youth into a driving force behind the continent’s political, social, cultural, and economic transformation.
However noble our vision may be, it will remain a distant reality until we put in place concrete measures with firm timelines, deliverables, and accountability mechanisms to ensure its realization. We can state here without fear of contradiction that the achievability of Agenda 2063 rests squarely on the seriousness of our commitment to uplift women and girls so that they can, in turn, pull the rest of the continent forward.
Beyond Agenda 2063, here in the region, our support for this consultative forum also draws inspiration from the SADC Vision 2050 and the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) 2020-2030, both of which reflect the region’s developmental aspirations. Of particular importance are the desired outcomes of (a) Increased participation of women in regional development and enhance equal access to opportunities and gender parity; (b) Strengthened gender mainstreaming at both national and regional level and (c) Enhanced elimination of Gender Based Violence.
What we need to do in re-imagining women economic participation in Africa for a prosperous future
Colleagues, the theme I have been requested to contribute to is Women’s Economic Participation in Africa: Reimagining a Prosperous future. Firstly, the topic is both timely and relevant as our continent’s current and future economic prospects are inextricably linked to the status of women empowerment across the continent, both at home and in the diaspora.
Secondly, given the limitations of time, i will now turn my attention to what i believe are 7 key dimensions of Women’s Economic Participation for a prosperous future in Africa:
A. Gender Transformation and Regional Economic Growth are mutually reinforcing.
Despite significant strides in gender inclusion, structural inequalities persist - hindering the full economic participation of women and, by extension, stalling regional economic growth. The economic potential of our region cannot be fully realised when half of our population remains underrepresented in trade, financial systems, digital economies, and entrepreneurship.
A gender-transformative approach is not about incremental progress; it is about a structural overhaul - placing women at the centre of decision-making, governance, and economic leadership. Our economies must be restructured to ensure equity is embedded in policy, investment frameworks, and institutional governance at national and regional levels. In order to achieve this , we leverage the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to create accessible opportunities for women-led enterprises in intra-African trade by removing trade barriers that disproportionately affect women and ensuring fair representation in cross-border trade policies.
B. Secondly, we must Guarantee Access to Education and Skills Development for Women and Girls
Ensuring girls and women have access to quality education at all levels is foundational to meaningful economic participation. This, in turn, will enable us to address known barriers such as early marriages, teenage pregnancies and other normalised norms that hold the girl child back. Moreover, We must provide young women with the kind of vocational and technical training that is tailored to market demands and empowers women to participate in diverse sectors, including STEM, agriculture, and entrepreneurship.
We must note that , as things stand, women make up less than a third of the workforce across STEM careers, a number that should alarm all of us. The situation is even more dire in cutting-edge fields, such as Artificial Intelligence, where only one in five professionals is a woman. The historical and ongoing exclusion of women from STEM is a tragedy we must confront urgently. Tangible programmes are needed to correct societal and cultural beliefs that use gender stereotypes to perpetuate scientific inequality. This also applies to the roles played by mass media, social networks, and video games that are rooted in harmful stereotypes.
Yes, representation matters, role models matter, but the issue is bigger than representation. Science and humanity suffer when women are excluded from STEM. Most importantly, the current economic participation and our future wellbeing suffers when girls are excluded from STEM.
C. Financial Inclusion and Access to Investment Opportunities
Thirdly, we need to rethink financial inclusion. Traditional banking continues to exclude millions of women entrepreneurs. We urgently need to scale up mobile banking platforms with women-centred design features, simplify loan requirements, and create specialized financial products for women-owned businesses.
We need a financial architecture that enables us to expand access to microfinance, low-interest loans, and credit facilities that are predictable enough to enable women to start and grow businesses.
It is only through a fundamental transformation of the banking and financial system that we will be able to promote meaningful access to savings accounts and investment opportunities that help women build economic resilience.
D. Access to Land, Productive Assets and Property Rights
Customary practices continue to limit women's access to productive assets. We need to accelerate land titling programs with gender equity mandates and modernize inheritance laws across all jurisdictions.
For us, financial inclusion is also fundamentally about ensuring that women from all walks of life have access to land and related productive assets to uplift themselves and their communities. It is about fostering gender-responsive supply chains and leveraging public procurement to achieve fair and equitable socio- economic relations. It is about modernizing the capacity of women- owned businesses to ensure they produce, supply, and distribute high-quality goods and services—equipped with the latest manufacturing technologies and production tools.
E. Digital Connectivity
The fourth dimension of Women’s Economic Participation is the urgent need to arrest gender digital divide that continues to perpetuate economic isolation. We need to find ways to provide women in the marketplace with access to smartphones, internet, and digital tools that can enhance their economic participation. We can do this by establishing subsidized connectivity programs targeting women, deploy community tech hubs in underserved areas, and incentivize women-led tech adoption.
F. Recognising and Valuing the Care Economy
Unpaid domestic work remains invisible in economic calculations. Globally, women spend an estimated two to ten times more hours than men on unpaid care work, significantly limiting their ability to pursue paid employment, education, and leadership opportunities. We feel Strongly that for as long as women remain on the margins of under-compensated economic activities, inclusive economic growth and financial inclusion will remain elusive.
We also need to consider the Development of satellite national accounts that measure care work, implement care credits in pension systems, and invest in public childcare infrastructure.
We are therefore calling for stronger care infrastructure, including affordable childcare and paid family leave, in order to support higher rates of women's workforce participation.
G. Regional and International Collaboration
In order to elevate Cross-Border Trade, where African women buy and sell to each other, the AFCTA should provide us with a historic capability for facilitating women’s participation in regional and international trade through simplified trade regulations and capacity-building programs.
For this to succeed, we need to provide our Women with support systems for women entrepreneurs that are de-siloed and targeted to their market needs. For example, as SADC we urgently need to create women's business incubation networks connecting rural and urban enterprises to regional value chains and export markets.
H. Women Leadership and Representation
Supporting and maintaining women’s representation in leadership and decision-making roles is what can drive policies that support gender equality.
I. Eradicating Gender Based Violence in workplaces
Programme Director, we cannot reimagine Women’s Economic Participation in Africa for a Prosperous future while remaining indifferent around the terror of Gender- Based Violence and femicide. This is an area that requires all of us to speak in one voice.
South Africa’s domestic and regional intruments to promote trade amongst women and youth
Here at home, we have in place legislative measures and instruments that are all intended to promote trade amongst Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities.
- Frist, our President , his excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, recently signed the Public Procurement Act which will enable us to leverage Public Procurement and Gender-Responsive Supply Chains to promote and enforce economic transformation and ensure that businesses owned by women, youth, and persons with disabilities receive equitable opportunities in government contracts. As these businesses grow, they stand a far greater chance of participating in regional and continental trade.
- Secondly, the President recently signed into Law the Land Expropriation Act which is another instrument to give women access to productive land and strategic assets to guarantee their economic participation.
- Thirdly, Our National Strategic Plan on GBVF also elevates the mainstreaming of economic opportunities for women in both public and private sectors.
- South Africa is in the process of ratifying the Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade. We encourage all member states to do the same so that we can actualize regional integration and enable our women and youth to buy and sell to each other with greater ease.
Our G20 presidency theme and the continent
Colleagues, as you are aware, South Africa has assumed the G20 Presidency under the theme “Solidarity, Equality, and
Sustainability”—a theme that reflects South Africa’s commitment to building on the efforts and successes of previous G20 Presidencies while advancing the sustainable development agenda.
The collective essence of Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainability aligns with the values enshrined in our Constitution—a cornerstone of our constitutional democracy that not only guides South Africa’s internal affairs but also shapes how we engage with the rest of the world.
This theme further underscores our commitment to making this a G20 Presidency of the African continent, positioning Africa’s increasingly catalytic role at the forefront of global well-being.
● Solidarity underscores our vision for a people-centred, development-oriented, and inclusive future.
● Equality represents our commitment to a collectively just, equitable and humane future for all
● Sustainability reflects our commitment to meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.
● During our first G20 Working Group meeting we elevated the issue of food insecurity given its relevance to our context. Of particular concern to African Women is food insecurity, a reality that threatens the very future we seek to build. Our idea of food security needs to go beyond the immediate availability of food to include the restoration of historically marginalized communities and their sovereignty over their food systems. We are only truly food secure when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and cultural preferences—while also acknowledging and addressing the historical injustices that have shaped current food inequities.
Conclusion
Colleagues,
The significance of the work you have gathered here cannot be overstated. Whether acknowledged or not, the world economy in general—and the African economy in particular—runs on the blood and sweat of women. From caregivers, community workers, factory, domestic, and farm workers to the highest levels of private and public sector governance, the very foundation of this economy relies on the daily labour of women, often for disproportionately low pay compared to their male counterparts
As I conclude, allow me to draw courage from one of our founding fathers. Addressing the gathering that founded the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on May 25, 1963, President Kwame Nkrumah made a statement that allows me to borrow from the wisdom of that day when he said:
“Africa must unite or perish… The struggle against colonialism does not end with the attainment of national independence… We are fast learning that political independence is not enough to rid us of the consequences of colonial rule. Without necessarily sacrificing our sovereignties, we can forge a political union based on defense, foreign affairs, diplomacy, a common citizenship, a monetary zone, and a central bank.
The mere act of unity and economic convergence among Africans places us in the arena of world power and great potential. It is from this arena of world power, in an evolving and increasingly contested geopolitical reality, that African self-determination and self-reliance will be attained without sacrificing our way of life. Nkrumah and others knew then what we must know now: only those who command and own the wealth-producing resources of the land can be considered truly free and truly sovereign.
This statement was as relevant in 1963 as it is in 2025.
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