Friday, October 29, 2010
[IWS] GENDER & ECONOMIC POLICY MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE-AFRICA (GEPMI-Africa) [28 October 2010]
IWS Documented News Service
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Institute for Workplace Studies----------------- Professor Samuel B. Bacharach
School of Industrial & Labor Relations-------- Director, Institute for Workplace Studies
Cornell University
16 East 34th Street, 4th floor---------------------- Stuart Basefsky
New York, NY 10016 -------------------------------Director, IWS News Bureau
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African Development Bank (AfDB)
Gender and Economic Policy Management Initiative-Africa (GEPMI-Africa)
See also
2010 African Economic Conference, Tunis, Tunisia, October 27-29, 2010
Press Release 28 October 2010]
Closing Gender Gaps crucial to Equitable, Efficient Economic Development Management-GEPMI-Africa partners
Four development institutions including the African Development Bank (AfDB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP) and the Makerere University, Kampala (MUK), on Wednesday October 27, 2010 in Tunis, jointly launched the Gender and Economic Policy Management Initiative (GEPMI-Africa).
In his opening remark UNDP African Regional Bureau Director, Tegegnework Gettu said that “closing gender gaps in Africa’s economic development is a matter of equity and efficiency”. For his part, AfDB President, Donald Kaberuka, said that the Bank had since recognized the need to mainstream gender in its operations, emphasizing that GEPMI-Africa is a ground-breaking initiative that will enhance cooperation between AfDB and the UNDP in the area of gender. In his intervention, the AfDB Chief Economist, Mthuli Ncube, said that the key gender issues today are knowing the number of female enrolment in schools, the spread of female enrolments into science and technology-based courses as well as the job and managerial distribution in favour of women. He noted that some studies have revealed that companies with greater number of women managers present better financial returns.
For his part, Mr Pedersen Mogens, AfDB Executive Director for Denmark, Finland, India, Norway, and Sweden observed that gender-differences affect economic outcome and pointed out that for economic growth to be sustained it has to be cared for equitably.
Speaking on behalf of UNECA and IDEP, Mr. Emmanuel Nnadozie expressed the delight of ECA and its capacity-building arm, IDEP to be partners in the initiative. Among the reasons he outlined for the importance of GEPMI-Africa were: “the centrality of gender in African development, the need to deepen previous efforts at integrating a gender approach into economic policy development planning and the importance of ensuring that policy-makers are themselves better equipped to handle gender issues in the development process.”
AND MORE....
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Stuart Basefsky
Director, IWS News Bureau
Institute for Workplace Studies
Cornell/ILR School
16 E. 34th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Telephone: (607) 255-2703
Fax: (607) 255-9641
E-mail: smb6@cornell.edu
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