Women have historically provided vision and leadership to African countries and are now being recognized as pivotal to the overall sustainable development of Africa. In many cases, however, this recognition has not resulted in the empowerment of African women, who still face great discrimination. This edited volume explores the contributions women have made to all phases of development—planning, design, construction, implementation, and operation—and the obstacles they have had to face. Besides analyzing the current situation and identifying trends, the contributors also make recommendations for policy reform and for future planning.
This volume reports on the state of crisis in Africa in the early twenty-first century. Africa, on the eve of the ‘independence revolution’, was the continent of hope and high expectations. By the third decade of independence, optimism had been replaced by dismality. African states had been beset by ethno-political squabbles, military rule, civil wars, Islamic and insurgent movements, extreme poverty and disease. With the ascent of redemocratization in the 1990s and of ‘new’ pan-Africanism derived from the formation of the African Union, Africa appeared set to claim its vaunted destiny. This book asks, with hindsight to the first decade of the twenty-first century: how real was the renaissance in African life? If the dismal African condition is a phase in the historical development of Africa, this volume does not see any golden age in the past to which Africa aspires to return. There is clearly a continuation and persistence of crisis, with an absence of good governance, personalisation of state power, widespread disease, and policy failure in education, economy and infrastructural development. Although endowed with abundant human and natural resources, Africa remains the least developed and most indebted continent. Whither then the African Renaissance? The methodologies that underpin the contributions in this book are as diverse as the specialisations of the contributors. The collection questions ideologically protected assumptions and presumptions, presenting Africa as it is, because it is only by knowing where Africa truly stands that a proper direction can be charted for it.
This vast dictionary launches the new series, Historical Dictionaries of Women in the World, and fills a huge gap in the literature, as there previously has not been any comprehensive reference work on African women. This dictionary includes over 660 entries on notable women in history, politics, religion, the arts, and other sectors; on events particularly associated with women; on women's organizations and publications; and on a range of topics that are important to women in general or that have a special importance for African women, including marriage, fertility, market women, goddesses, and much more. Entries include cross-referencing information that facilitates readers' ability to find related information. The book also includes an introductory essay and a chronology on African women's history, as well as an extensive bibliography divided into sub-sections on different historical eras and subjects. Access to finding specific information is further aided by a country index. A wide range of users will find this reference extremely valuable, including researchers in African or women's history, high school and university students, and people involved with African policy and development issues such as diplomats or aid workers.
This book provides a critical and decolonial analysis of gender and development theory and practice in religious societies through the presentation of a detailed ethnographic study of conjugal violence in Ethiopia. Responding to recent consensus that gender mainstreaming approaches have failed to produce their intended structural changes, Romina Istratii explains that gender and development analytical and theoretical frameworks are often constructed through western Euro-centric lenses ill-equipped to understand gender-related realities and human behaviour in non-western religious contexts and knowledge systems. Instead, Istratii argues for an approach to gender-sensitive research and practice which is embedded in insiders’ conceptual understandings as a basis to theorise about gender, assess the possible gendered underpinnings of local issues and design appropriate alleviation strategies. Drawing on a detailed study of conjugal abuse realities and attitudes in two villages and the city of Aksum in Northern Ethiopia, she demonstrates how religious knowledge can be engaged in the design and implementation of remedial interventions. This book carefully evidences the importance of integrating religious traditions and spirituality in current discussions of sustainable development in Africa, and speaks to researchers and practitioners of gender, religion and development in Africa, scholars of non-western Christianities and Ethiopian studies, and domestic violence researchers and practitioners.
Although Japanese economic development is often discussed, less attention is given to social development, and much less to gender related issues. By examining Japanese experiences related to gender, the authors seek insights relevant to the current developing countries. Simultaneously, the book points out the importance for Japanese society to draw lessons from the creativity and activism of women in developing countries.
Sorting Africa's Development Puzzle: The Participatory Social Learning Theory as an Alternative Approach is a comprehensive exploration of why Africa has not managed to achieve a sustainable and self-regenerating development over the past half-century of effort. The work situates the problems of Africa's persistent underdevelopment in the practices employed by national political elites, donors, and lenders to African development that played roles in determinant policy and planning. Unlike many newly developed countries and regions, and contrary to the historical experiences of developed countries where ordinary people were full stakeholders and drivers of development, Africa's development has been top-down, expert and capital driven, mechanical, and typically externally designed. Ordinary Africans were made marginal to development. This approach to Africa's development was devoid of building the people and their institutions as the legitimate means of development. The entrusting of Africa's development to local and international elites to the exclusion of the people from decision-making and full participation, has led to grievous deficits in the formation of human and social capital, and legitimate economic, social, and political institutions for development. The book offers a studied alternative that can positively change Africa's development direction - The Participatory Social Learning Approach. The philosophical, theoretical, historical and heuristic origins of this alternative are offered in detail within this book.
According to a 2018 World Bank report, Africa is the only region with more women than men choosing to become entrepreneurs – a phenomenon that is not the subject of adequate discussion. This book reveals the latest research-based understanding of the entrepreneurial activities of women in sub-Saharan Africa. Specially invited subject experts present salient dimensions of entrepreneurship by African women, from environmental factors to motivations and influencers as well as financial and non-financial constraints, and highlight the significant role of cultural differences. This book provides a mixture of theoretical, conceptual, and empirical research, and fills the knowledge gap by presenting a wide range of opportunities and challenges faced by sub-Saharan African women entrepreneurs. This book will help policy makers and academic researchers in understanding the role of institutions and entrepreneurship policy in building a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region.
This is an in-depth look at the biomedical, socio-cultural, economic, legal and political, and educational vulnerabilities faced by the population that is most vulnerable to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS: African women.
In this book, Jeremiah I. Dibua challenges prevailing notions of Africa's development crisis by drawing attention to the role of modernization as a way of understanding the nature and dynamics of the crisis, and how to overcome the problem of underdevelopment. He specifically focuses on Nigeria and its development trajectory since it exemplifies the crisis of underdevelopment in the continent. He explores various theoretical and empirical issues involved in understanding the crisis, including state, class, gender and culture, often neglected in analysis, from an interdisciplinary, radical political economy perspective. This is the first book to adopt such an approach and to develop a new framework for analyzing Nigeria's and Africa's development crisis. It will influence the debate on the development dilemma of African and Third World societies and will be of interest to scholars and students of race and ethnicity, modern African history, class analysis, gender studies, and development studies.
Recently, greater emphasis has been placed on the fact that women, regardless of whether they are located in developed or developing nations, are still facing numerous challenges regarding their financial status, education, and independence. As recent movements have highlighted such problems as unequal pay and sexual harassment and abuse, it has become imperative that steps must be taken to analyze these problems and offer solutions to combat these inequalities that would improve women’s lives and society as a whole. Overcoming Challenges and Barriers for Women in Business and Education: Socioeconomic Issues and Strategies for the Future is an essential reference source that highlights cross-cultural perspectives, obstacles, and opportunities pertaining to the advancement of women’s lives in society. The chapters within the book explore a variety of concepts for building a bridge to women empowerment and improving their participation in the development of their respective societies. Featuring research on topics such as global business, higher education, and gender discrimination, this book is ideally designed for managers, business professionals, entrepreneurs, social scientists, policymakers, gender studies researchers, students, and academicians looking for strategies that will help to empower women through the book’s social justice model, which acts as an underlying theoretical construct.
