Africa-Press – Botswana. Investing in women will spark change and speed up the transition towards a healthier, safer and more equal world for all as well as attainment of Botswana’s Vision 2036.
This was said by Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Ms Anna Mokgethi at the International Women’s Day commemoration hosted by the Chinese Embassy in Gaborone Friday.
Minister Mokgethi therefore urged leaders to design strategies targeted at empowering women, saying such would ensure expeditious attainment of sustainable gender parity.
She said deliberate decisions should be made to ensure a significant mobilisation of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all dimensions.
She also highlighted the need to create sound policy frameworks at all levels and support accelerated investments in poverty eradication.
“We all envisage a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and that all economic barriers be removed. Women need a just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world in which the needs of the most vulnerable are met,” she said.
The event was celebrated under the theme;Invest in women, Accelerate Progress, which Ms Mokgethi said was in line with the United Nations Sustainable Goal of ‘no poverty, zero hunger and gender equality’.
She said statistics from various sources revealed the economic disparity between men and women, with women being on the margins.
Therefore, she said it was important to increase women participation in various spheres including work, leadership roles and political voice, education, providing an enabling environment for economic opportunity, access to and control of productive resources, legal protection as well as physical security and autonomy
For her part, Ms Tong Xin, wife of the Chinese Ambassador to Botswana, said China was always willing to strengthen exchange and cooperation over women related issues with Botswana.
“China does its best to build a society with gender equality and inclusive development, a world where ‘she power’ can grow vigorously so as to contribute to the building of a human community with a shared future and a better world,” Ms Tong said.
She said in recent years, China had assisted developing countries implement 100 maternal and child health projects to improve health in relevant African countries.
For More News And Analysis About Botswana Follow Africa-Press
