Source: Voice of America
South Sudanese women leaders are calling on the president to give 35 percent of executive appointments to women, as agreed to in the recently revitalized peace deal.
On Tuesday, President Salva Kiir appointed 10 people to a committee tasked with starting the process to create South Sudan's envisioned transitional government. Only one of the 10 are women.
Source: CNN Africa
A Kenyan governor has been charged with aiding and abetting the murder of a pregnant student with whom, prosecutors say, he was in an "intimate relationship." Gov. Okoth Obado of Migori County in western Kenya is accused of killing Sharon Otieno, 26, who was abducted September 3 alongside local journalist Barack Oduor.
Johannesburg, 27 September 2018: On 28 September, International Day of Safe Abortion, organisations across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) will join hands to demand safe abortion for women as part of a broader “voice and choice” campaign.
Gender Links, SAFAIDS and the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance will launch a campaign for access to services in South Africa and Mozambique (the only two countries in the region where abortion is legal) and decriminalisation of abortion in the 13 other countries in the region.
Source: Albawaba The Loop
Tens of Sudanese went to social media to argue over women rights and equality in the north African country, Sudan.
This came after a video was shared of a heated discussion between Sudanese women and the head of the Sudan Scholars Corporation, Mohammed Osman Saleh, over regulating female dress and reasons behind the rising sexual harassment rates.
Source: BBC News
A new study has found that nearly half of Kenyan mothers with disabled babies were pressured to kill them. The two-year research, carried out by the charity Disability Rights International, also found that such mothers are often blamed for the conditions of their children.
IN A dusty village in southern Niger, Fatia holds her daughter close to her breast, smiling, though the baby looks much too large for her. Four years ago she married at the age of 16, she reckons, but she may have been younger. Since then she has had two children.
Three out of four girls in Niger are married before they are 18, giving this poor west African country the world’s highest rate of child marriage. The World Bank says it is one of only a very small number to have seen no reduction in recent years; the rate has even risen slightly. The country’s minimum legal age of marriage for girls is 15, but some brides are as young as nine.
Source: All Africa
Women from a rural community in the north of the country are demanding better access to customary farmland. In many regions across Africa, land remains under the control of men thanks to stubborn cultural barriers.
In the small rural community of Bagliga in northern Ghana, a crowd of angry women march towards the chief's palace. They're demanding better access to land. It's a rare sight in this part of the country, where land has long been under control of chiefs and men.
Source: AllAfrica
Migori Governor Okoth Obado has been arrested over the murder of his pregnant girlfriend Sharon Otieno.
Mr Obado was on Friday morning grilled by detectives at the headquarters of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) on Kiambu Road in Nairobi.He spent the better part of the morning with detectives and sources told the Nation that he was expected to record a statement on the matter.
His arrest comes a day after detectives and government scientists confirmed that the baby boy ripped from Ms Sharon Otieno’s womb was his, thus putting the Migori governor at the heart of investigations into the abduction and killing of the Rongo University student.
Source: AllAfrica
A Public Health Scientist, Suzanne Bell on Thursday said the abortion rate by women of reproductive age in Nigeria has risen between 1.8 and 2.7 million.
Mrs Bell, who made the disclosure at a dissemination exercise of the Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020 (PMA 2020) in Abuja, said that the rise was as a result of unintended pregnancies.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
For almost two decades, 42-year-old Patience earned a steady income sending girls from Nigeria to Europe for sex work, using black magic to stop the women from fleeing.
Now she is afraid the illegal trade could kill her.
During a ceremony in March, Oba Ewuare II, leader of the historic kingdom of Benin in southern Nigeria, invoked curses on anyone who used witchcraft to aid illegal migration. Since then, anecdotal evidence suggests the trafficking has slowed although it is too soon for firm data to be collated. The number of female Nigerians arriving in Italy by boat surged to more than 11,000 in 2016 from 1,500 in 2014, with at least four in five forced into prostitution, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Source: Daily Monitor
Rwandan opposition politician Victoire Umuhoza Ingabire has vowed to push for the opening up of the political space days after she was released from prison following a presidential pardon.
Ms Ingabire was freed on Saturday September 15 after serving eight of her 15-year sentence.She had been arrested in 2010 soon after returning from exile in the Netherlands seeking to contest for the presidency.She was charged with inciting revolt against the government, forming armed groups to destabilise the country, and minimising the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
Source: Metro
Girls in Kenya are forced to have sex with older men because it is the only way they can access sanitary products due to period poverty and the stigma surrounding menstruation. Research by Unicef has found that 65% of females in the Kibera slum, the largest urban slum in Africa, had traded sex for the sanitary products. The charity also found that 54% of Kenyan girls said they had problems accessing feminine hygiene products and 22% of school girls are having to buy their own.
Death of sisters aged 10 and 11 undermines hopes of change inspired by announcement of landmark prosecution
Two more girls in Somalia have died after undergoing female genital mutilation, just weeks after a high-profile case prompted the attorney general to announce the first prosecution against the practice in the country’s history.
Two sisters, aged 10 and 11, bled to death last week after they were cut in the remote pastoral village of Arawda North in Galdogob district, Puntland, said activist Hawa Aden Mohamed of the Galkayo Centre.
Source: The Jordan Times
ZOMBA, MALAWI — When I was eight years old, a family friend told my father that he thought I was destined for leadership. My dad never let me forget that heady observation, and as a result of his constant encouragement, I took every opportunity I had to pursue our friend’s prophecy. Today, I owe much of my success to my late father, whose belief in me was unwavering.
Source: Daily Monitor
The absence of female police officers at majority of the police posts in the districts of Gomba and Mukono, is hampering the fight against sexual violence against women, an official has said.
Ms Noor Nakibuuka Musisi, an official from a Center for Health, Human Rights and Development, explained earlier today that the absence of the female police officers has made some women/girls to fear to report sexual abuses committed against them.
Ms Nakibuuka, named Mamba Police Post in Gomba District and Nkonge Police Post Mukono as some of the posts without female officers attached to them.
To solve the crisis of violence against women we need to look to boys’ experience of childhood in South Africa. Behaviour disorders that lead to violence in later life are already present at the age of ten. This is not to say that all boys who experience abuse become violent. But if we want to heal our communities we must turn our attention to cycles of abuse that begin at a very early age.
In Diepsloot, a township north of Johannesburg, sexual and gender-based violence is a pervasive issue. In a 2014 survey, 76% of those questioned said they or someone close to them had been a victim of violence in the home or from an intimate partner. Domestic violence was the most prevalent problem, followed by rape and other forms of sexual violence (37%).
Source: UNFPA
On 1 August, just one week after the World Health Organization declared an end to the ninth Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the tenth struck.
“We had two sick people in the centre – a man and a youth – who died of unknown causes,” recalled Sister Yvette Kanyere, manager of the Mangina Reference Health Centre. “They were bleeding everywhere and we did not know what had happened [to them].”
Situated in North Kivu Province, Mangina is now the epicentre of the deadly outbreak. In just over a month, more than 130 people have been infected, and 90 have died.
Source: Face2FaceAfrica
Recently- re-elected president of Mali, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita named 35-year-old Kamissa Camara as the minister for foreign affairs in his recent cabinet reshuffle. With a rich background in foreign affairs and policies, Camara becomes the first woman to hold this post in the history of Mali.
Before her appointment as the minister, she served as the diplomatic advisor to President Keita. She is also the founder and co-chair of the Sahel Strategy Forum, which provides a platform to stakeholders to promote peace, security and development across the Sahel.
Source: BBC Africa
If you are a man and mulling over the idea of running for president in 2019 for one of Nigeria's main parties then deep pockets are required.
Campaigning, of course, is going to cost money, but both the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) charge presidential hopefuls who want to run in the party primaries tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege. The APC, the party of President Muhammadu Buhari, wants $125,000 (£97,000) for a nomination form. An opposition PDP presidential nomination is cheap by comparison - just $33,000.
Women, on the other hand, get a discount - half price for the APC or totally free if you want to try your luck with PDP. But neither party has ever nominated a woman since the return of democracy in 1999 and only one woman, Sarah Jibril, has run in the primaries.
She gained just one vote in the 2011 contest.
Source: The Citizen