Africa has made remarkable progress in implementing global and regional gender equality and women’s empowerment commitments.

Gender equality and women’s empowerment have been defined as priority goals in the new discourse and narrative for Africa’s structural transformation and sustainable development. Investing in these goals is also recognized as a cost-effective pathway to achieving inclusive and broad-based growth, as well as sustainable development of the continent. Moreover, African Heads of State and Government recently declared 2015 as the Year of Women’s Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063. Concomitantly, they adopted Agenda 2063, a development framework that aims to achieve a continent “that is integrated, peaceful, prosperous, people-centred and representing a dynamic force in the global arena”.

Such high-level regional development frameworks present greater opportunities for accelerating progress in the implementation of gender equality commitments. In the global context, two main conducive policy processes have occurred, namely the 20-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, more commonly referred to as the Beijing+20 review, which was undertaken in 2014, and the drafting of the post-2015 development agenda. It is noteworthy that both document calls for greater action towards a transformational change in the lives of women and girls.

On the whole, Africa’s economic outlook is promising. The continent’s economic performance has been strong over the past decade, with average growth rates of 5 to 7 per cent. Moreover, 6 of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa (Economic Commission for Africa, 2015). While growth on the supply-side has been buoyed by agriculture, extractive industries, construction and services, the demand-side has been bolstered by private consumption and capital-intensive infrastructure investments. This favourable outlook is expected to continue into 2016, with Africa’s overall gross domestic product growth set to rise from 3.9 per cent in 2014 to 4.5 per cent by the end of 2015. Despite such progress, however, the continent continues to show significant inequality in income and wealth distribution, with a Gini coefficient estimated at 43.9.

Women and young people, in particular, have borne the brunt of gender inequality and marginalization on the continent. It is important to note that the other six Aspirations of Agenda 2063 cannot be realized unless the empowerment of women and the youth under Aspiration 6 is achieved; by instituting gender-responsive and accountability mechanisms and indicators to enable the delivery of the promises made by African leaders.

The present report provides an analytical snapshot of the results of selected indicators to measure progress between women and men, to create a scorecard for African countries. It also discusses critical policy issues and outlines some policy recommendations to support member States in their efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment.

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Introduction

In view of rising gender inequality in certain development sectors in Africa, a Gender Scorecard has been designed. The scorecard is intended to be a simple, quick and user-friendly tool that member States can use to measure their performance against key ratified equality gender commitments.

Objectives of the scorecard

By developing the scorecard, the African Union Commission aims to achieve the following objectives:

• Support member States to accelerate the implementation of their commitments in Africa as spelled out in Agenda 2063 and other commitments;

• Provide member States with an easy and quick instrument to assess their progress in achieving equitable growth and transformative development;

• Take comprehensive steps and actions towards a transformational change in the lives of women and girls.

The scorecard is informed by the Economic Commission for Africa’s pioneering index, the African Gender and Development Index, which is an in-depth measure of the gaps in the status of women and men in Africa, and assesses progress made by Governments in implementing gender policies (Economic Commission for Africa, 2011). The scorecard seeks to complement the index as a simpler and quicker assessment tool informed by Agenda 2063 and other regional frameworks such as the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, the Constitutive Act of the African Union and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.

Selected sectors

The scorecard focuses on key sectors that have positive multiple and intergenerational effects on the lives of women and girls. These are: health; education; politics and decision-making; access to and ownership of land; access to credit (financial resources and services); business; and employment. Not only do these sectors reinforce each other in terms of achieving full and sustainable development for Africa, but also gender equality in these sectors produces positive externalities, which reverberate throughout the whole African economy.

These key sectors are further clustered under three overarching themes of development: economic empowerment (employment, business, access to land and access to credit); social empowerment (education and health); and political empowerment (women in parliament and in ministerial positions). The clusters are interlinked, such that progress in one is often closely associated with progress in another.

Methodology

The African Gender Scorecard is made up of 7 sectors with an average of 3 sub-dimensions per sector and a total of 23 indicators. Data from international sources have been used to ensure relevance and comparability across countries. For each indicator, the latest available data for each country have been used. Consequently, the year of data for each indicator may vary from country to country. A few exceptions to this rule are indicated in the detailed description of all the indicators. A complete list of indicators with sources and definitions, as well as ranges of years of data used for each indicator, is provided in annex 1.

Achieving equitable transformative development: Where does Africa stand?

Transformative development is a process of empowerment and self-reliance, which suggests that development cannot be transformative or sustainable unless it is equitable, and indeed there are many studies and plenty of evidence to support such positive linkages in Africa. The findings of the scorecard are evidence of the important progress made by African countries over the past few decades in some of the sectors. However, there are variations between countries because of the different developmental stages attained by countries. Additionally, the pace and path of progress are not sufficient to fast-track the move towards gender equality, as suggested by the figures in this section.

Key results on the economic empowerment cluster

The economic empowerment cluster comprises four sectors – employment, business, access to land, and access to credit – all of which are critically important for women to have an equitable share in Africa’s remarkable economic growth. Despite the strong economic performance registered by Africa over the past decade, the economic status of most women has not changed drastically. In fact, women are yet to benefit fully from Africa’s economic growth. Structural barriers impede the participation of women in economic activities with sub-optimal returns, such as the industrial sectors (i.e. extractive industries at the artisanal and small-scale levels) and agri-business. Although women are key actors in African economies, they remain overrepresented in the informal sector, which is characterized by low wages and difficult working conditions.

Business sector

In the business sector, women’s participation has been captured using two indicators: women and men in senior-level positions in firms and the percentage of firms with female participation in ownership. No country has yet achieved gender equality in senior-level positions. In fact, most countries are far from achieving gender parity, with only 4 countries out of the 37 for which data are available nearing the middle parity of 5 (Benin, Liberia, Madagascar and Namibia). The picture looks more positive for the second indicator (percentage of firms with female participation in ownership). The results for this indicator reveal a median score of 4, with 16 countries above the middle parity of 5, out of which 7 countries (Angola, Botswana, the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Mali and Zimbabwe) with a score of more than 10, which means that more than 50 per cent of firms have women among the owners (the definition of “firm” here also includes informal firms).

Of the 37 countries for which data are available, enabling the calculation of an overall score for the business sector, 4 countries (Benin, the Central African Republic, Madagascar and Kenya) have above-average scores of 6, 4 others have scores of 7, while two – Liberia and Mali – are leading with scores of 8, suggesting that they are close to parity. However, the majority of African countries are still far from parity, which calls for urgent action to achieve women’s economic empowerment in this sector. Indeed, promoting women’s equal participation in the upper echelons of management is key to influencing positive change. It could also result in handsome economic and business returns for firms in Africa: studies suggest that companies perform best when women are strongly represented at senior levels.

Access to credit

To measure parity between women and men’s access to credit, the study used two indicators – having an account at a financial institution and borrowing from a financial institution. Overall Africa has made some progress with regard to women’s access to credit, with a significant number of women borrowing from a financial institution. However, progress is slow, as only 8 out of the 43 countries for which data were available demonstrated equal access for women and men or easier access for women to credit facilities.

In a number of African countries, an increased proportion of women have an overall access to credit. The Central African Republic has surpassed parity, while Ghana and South Africa have achieved perfect parity. A further 10 countries (Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia) are close to parity with a score of 9. Nevertheless, these figures should not conceal the challenge facing women in their access to substantial financial instruments and loans essential to grow businesses and improve livelihoods. There is a tendency in formal financial institutions to provide marginal or lower forms of credit instruments to women in comparison to men.

Key policy messages

The rising growth trends on the continent indicate that “Africa is rising” and this new momentum can be turned into opportunities for empowering women and girls, if greater actions are taken to shorten the long journey towards transformative change.

African countries have made important strides towards achieving gender equality but the pace and path of progress should be accelerated in order to achieve lasting change in women’s and girls’ lives.

The commitment to structural transformation made by African Heads of State and Government opens up a window of opportunity for better gender-responsive policies and programmes, especially in non-traditional sectors such as mining and agribusiness.

Progress has been more significant in the social development (both health and education) and political empowerment clusters than in the economic cluster.

One pervasive policy challenge in addressing gender issues is the lack of accurate data. Many countries are still failing to invest in the institutionalization of the collection, analysis and use of genderresponsive statistics to inform policymaking and programming.