President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, on Monday officially opened the Women Deliver (WD) conference 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda, East Africa, calling on African leaders to implement policies targeted at protecting women and making it easy for them to excel in all areas.
He was joined by six other African country presidents: Senegal’s MackySall, Ethiopia’s Sahle-Work Zewde and Hungary’s Katalyn Novak and other high profile personalities from across the world for the historic grand opening.
This is the first time WD conference, which is the World’s largest conference on gender equality and health, rights and wellbeing of girls, is being held on the African continent.
The four-day conference themed “Spaces Solidarity and Solutions” brought together more than 6,000 women empowerment advocates, more than 1,000 adolescent girls with thousand others joining the conference virtually.
Other participants also included decision makers from diverse fields, including civil society, government, youth-led organisations, private sector and international agencies.
According to Mr Kagame, much remained to be done in tackling bias attitudes on gender issues which were deeply embedded in the political, social and economic systems.
He indicated that everybody needed to have the passion to change negative mindsets about women and young girls, adding that Rwanda’s annual budget statement had been mainstreamed to ensure public spending took account of how budgetary decisions affected men and women differently.
“Our priority is to advance gender equality across all sectors, especially in the digital and financial space. We must ensure the technological progression of the world does not rather create new sources of inequality,” the President added.
He bemoaned that despite the introduction of some initiatives to bridge the gender gap in many parts of the world, inequalities continued to be a problem.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the WD conference, Madam Maline Khan, at a press briefing ahead of the opening of the event, assured of her outfit’s commitment towards supporting all activities geared towards creating the enabling environment for women and young girls to thrive.
“Let us ensure we do not fail young girls but rather help them to succeed,” she said.
A former President of Ireland, Madam Mary Robinson, on her part, mentioned that Rwanda had lifted Africa up in terms of promoting gender equality, adding that many women in Rwanda have been given the power and opportunity to play various critical decision-making roles so “there is a lot we can learn from Rwanda because the country is leaving no woman behind”.
Former Prime Minister of New Zealand and board chair of the WD conference, Ms Helen Clark, also urged the media to force change to happen in terms of promoting the wellbeing of women and young girls.
FROM RAISSA SAMBOU, KIGALI, RWANDA
