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The first lady of the Islamic Republic of The Gambia, Madam Zineb Yahya Jammeh, says that country has adopted a multi-sectoral approach to the empowerment of its women.

In line with this, she said, the government had been investing in vocational and skills training for the youth and women and facilitating their access to grants and concessionary financing to enhance employment and self-employment.

 Those interventions, which had already resulted in an increase in the involvement of women in agricultural and horticultural production, fisheries activities, as well as the informal sector, had contributed immensely to the international award-winning performance of The Gambia in hunger reduction and poverty eradication, she stated. 

Madam Jammeh, who was speaking during the second Crans Montana Forum in Dakhla in Morocco, said the interventions would be expanded and scaled up under the government’s medium-term development framework called the “Programme for Accelerated Growth and Employment — 2017 to 2021.”

She said the programme, which is under formulation, was designed to accommodate the internationally agreed sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the 10-year implementation plan of the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

All of these, she noted, had components for continuity in the quest for gender equality and women empowerment.                                     

Education policy

The Gambian First Lady was happy to announce that the government’s policy of free education for the girl child would be scaled up in the National Education Policy — 2015 to 2030, to free education for all up to the university level by 2018 and would also ensure that educational targets under the SDGs would be met.

“It is the output of the educational sector that ensure that operations of the machinery of government and the private sector feature the involvement of women.” 

“This priority sector of the government has already registered significant progress, as we have reached gender parity in both primary and secondary school enrolment in the MDGs,” she said.

The government also looked forward to a similar level of progress from the health sector, particularly the health of women, she said.

She said The Gambia had also made appreciable progress in reducing mortality and morbidity rates among infants and mothers.

On the ongoing National Health Policy 2014 to 2020, she said increased planned government and partner investments in health system strengthening and improvement, among others, would further complement investments in the education of women.

“Without a healthy female section of the population, investment in the education of women will not translate into optimal and sustainable political and economic empowerment of women,” she stated.

Contributing to the discussion, Madam Sheika Al-Qassemi, of the United Arab Emirates, said Africa did not need any pity from any country, neither did the continent need loans.

Loans, she noted, crippled nations, and said Africa had fertile land and what it needed was partnership.