Educating women works

More proof:

Empower Women to Realize the African Dream

http://allafrica.com/stories/201103080561.html

In Africa, the feminization of poverty still remains acute. One in 20 girls born today in Angola, Mozambique, Liberia and Sierra Leone will die in childbirth. An African woman is 25 times more likely to die during labour than a European woman. Girls still face genital mutilation in 28 African countries. More than 800,000 Africans, most of them female, are victims of human trafficking.  Three young women are infected with HIV/AIDS for every young man in Africa.

The African woman, however, is also Africa’s face of hope, strength and opportunity. The rate of female entrepreneurship is higher in Africa than in any other region of the world. An African country – Rwanda – boosts the highest female representation in parliament. The primary enrollment rate has climbed from 84 girls for every 100 boys in 1991 to 91 in 2009.

• First, more African girls must go to and stay in school long enough to be armed with the skills essential for success.
• Second, protecting women’s rights is essential for enhancing their access to economic mobility. 
• Third, women must gain access to productive resources.
• Fourth, with African women currently absorbed by businesses concentrated in the less productive areas of the informal sector, breaking free will require access to credit – not just microfinance but to higher credit amounts at low interest rates with longer maturity terms.

 So far, gender has been an obstacle, yet every obstacle is an opportunity in disguise. The expansion of economic and social empowerment of the African woman is the key to the realization of the African promise.