Gender has, in recent years, been a top and cross-cutting priority for Africa, and 2016 is no different. In fact, the African Union has declared 2016 to be “The Year of Human Rights with a Special Focus on Women’s Human Rights.” Gender was a priority in the Millennium Development Goals and continues to be so in the new Sustainable Development Goals. True, with this focus many African women have made great strides in economic and political empowerment, but still too often do women bear the brunt of economic hardship and violence.
African women are becoming increasingly involved in leadership. As seen in Figure 1, female participation in African legislatures outpaces many developed countries. Rwanda (at 63.8 percent) ranks number one in the world, with the Seychelles, Senegal, and South Africa similarly being in the top 10 countries. Fifteen African countries rank ahead of France and the United Kingdom, 24 rank ahead of the United States, and 42 rank ahead of Japan.
Not all is rosy, though: Women in Nigeria, the Comoros, Swaziland, the Republic of the Congo, and Benin still have less than 8 percent female representation in their legislatures. (For the full list of African rankings, see Chapter 5 in Foresight Africa 2016).