Women: Economic Empowerment

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, there is an old African proverb in the Akan tradition of west Africa, where I was brought up, which says in translation, “Men tend not to listen to women until it is too late”. Bearing in mind all that is to happen this year in New York and Paris in relation to the sustainable development goals and climate change, we men had better listen to women or it will be too late. So many remarkable contributions have been made, and are to be made, in this debate from so many remarkable women that there is much that we need to heed.

I want to concentrate on Africa and development. Bearing in mind that this is a day of international celebration, I mention two remarkable west African women—my grandmother, an entrepreneurial, innovative medium-sized cassava and cocoa farmer in the Akyem region of the Gold Coast, as it was—Ghana, as is—and Bertha Conton, a renowned educator who taught me to read, was the inspiration for a book club in my primary school and is well into her nineties, but to this day is a teacher presiding over a school in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

I shall concentrate my remarks on Sierra Leone. Ebola has had a devastating impact not simply on the economy of Sierra Leone but also, significantly, on the real progress that had been made in the advancement and empowerment of women. I am afraid that Ebola is not an equal opportunity virus: it discriminates against women. Why is that? It is because women have caring responsibilities. Traditionally in west Africa and, indeed, globally, at times of death or sickness, women are always to be found in the front line either domestically or professionally as nurses and clinicians. The result of that in Sierra Leone is that more women than men have died tending to the bodies and to the sick. However, the consequences go beyond that as the not insignificant gains that had been made in education, which started from a very low base, have been set back markedly. With the closure of schools, girls have been sent home in circumstances which make it very unlikely that they will ever return even when the schools reopen. There has been a huge rise in teenage pregnancies in Sierra Leone and a rise in sexual assaults on girls as men have preyed on the increased vulnerability of these young women who are now often the sole providers in these circumstances.

Sierra Leone is not a poor country but it is an impoverished one. It is rich in minerals, agriculture and human potential but it is impoverished as a result of greed, avarice and exploitation, quite apart from the sister evils of ignorance and neglect. It is an impoverished country where more than half the population lives on less than $1.25 a day. One of the key causes of the civil war, which ended only just over a decade ago, was the unequal distribution of power, the consequences of which were felt significantly by women. Women were effectively prevented from accessing the sources of either traditional power in the chieftaincy or power through democratic institutions. The good news is that prior to the outbreak of Ebola that situation was being reversed. Sierra Leone had one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, as I saw for myself when I had the privilege to visit that country last year shortly before the outbreak. During that visit I met the Parliamentary Women’s Caucus and an inspirational group of women brought together by Christian Aid with their local partners in that country. I met women who were empowered through being able to hold local budget holders to account for the money that was being spent on health and education through a project supported by the European Union, DfID, Christian congregations and others the length and breadth of this country. Women were being empowered through their activity on the ground. The danger is that all that will now be set back and will not produce the real economic gains that were beginning to come on stream.

Therefore, I ask for two things. First, even as we debate what is to happen post-Ebola, we must ensure that we learn from the experience of those women and that we listen to their voices. When you ask women what they want in Sierra Leone and, indeed, in many other places in Africa, they tell you that they do not want massive spending on tertiary hospitals but rather a focus on community and public health. They want girls to attend primary schools but they also want to see them enrolled in secondary and tertiary education because, although real advances have been made in primary education, girls are not advancing in secondary and tertiary education. Even as we advance the cause of primary education on that continent, we must take care not to forget secondary and tertiary education because African women want to be scientists too. They believe that the future of their continent and of Sierra Leone depends on the capacity of African women to become scientists and to take up roles in the health infrastructure. That involves training women nurses and doctors and training women to work in scientific laboratories. Strengthening the healthcare system demands the involvement and engagement of women.

We should not lose sight of that or of the fact that more than 60% of women in Sierra Leone are engaged in agriculture, which is key to the future of that economy and of Africa as a whole. My paternal grandmother—this innovative cassava and cocoa grower—knew the value of agricultural extension officers, who, interestingly enough, were more prevalent in colonial times than they are across Africa today. My grandmother knew the importance of research and development in agriculture. She knew the importance of being able to link, and her produce being linked, to global markets. We therefore have to make sure that we do not neglect agriculture, the role of women entrepreneurs and, importantly, thinking beyond subsistence to the creation of wealth and linking women to global markets.

We have an opportunity on this International Women’s Day to celebrate the achievements of the many great women who have gone before and those who work and are activists now—north, south, east and west and on all sides of the political spectrum. We have the opportunity to celebrate their work and to rededicate ourselves to a future that they are enabled to shape. We need to heed. It is not too late and the best may yet be to come.