African Women’s Incredible Resilience in Times of COVID-19

Kinanata Sali Yaya, 27, is an entrepreneur who started a mask manufacturing business with hersister and brother in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Central African Republic.

2 MARCH 2021

allAfrica.com

The World Bank and AllAfrica Global Media Group will jointly organize, on Monday March 8, 2021, a virtual panel on the topic: COVID-19, Revealer of African women’s incredible Resilience.

The webinar which will be organized as part of the International Women’s Day will showcase the tremendous resilience of African women who have been first on the front lines in the fight against COVID 19 on the continent.

This will also be an opportunity to show that despite the pandemic, West and Central African women, in particular, have shown determination and creativity amidst the social and economic consequences of the crisis. The resilience is even deemed ‘incredible’ given that in Africa, women run a higher risk of losing their source of income without any social safety net to turn to, because they work disproportionately in the informal sector and do not benefit at all from social welfare measures.

The situation was worsened by the closure of schools and nurseries which forced many women to seek for a balance between full-time employment and the responsibilities of childcare and schooling, while devoting a disproportionate part of their time to unpaid household activities. This added up to pre-pandemic inequalities which highlight huge socio-economic gaps that exist in African society.

In such setting, the World Bank and AllAfrica Global Media Group that have made African women’s economic empowerment their priesthood summon leading/prominent personalities to magnify the resilience of this social layer.

In that respect, during the virtual panel, Ousmane Diagana, Vice-President of the World Bank for West and Central Africa will talk about the Bank's priorities for women and explain how the international institution reflects on the future of the world, after the pandemic.

In a column published in the international press, Diagana invites for reflection on "How to manage the current emergency caused by the pandemic while preventing conflicts and fighting against exclusion? It will be by investing in social protection and food security, especially in most critical areas, in order to reach most vulnerable populations, including internally displaced people, women and young people”.

This will also be an opportunity for Dr. Aissatou Sophie Gladima, Minister of Petroleum and Energy of Senegal, to share her experience as a woman leader. The minister will share the panel with Hind Oumarou Ibrahim, Chadian environmental activist and geographer Djaïli Amadou Amal, Cameroonian writer committed againstsocial discrimination and the condition of women in the Sahel,and Rabiatou Harouna Moussa, computer engineer and co-founder of WO'MEN Devv.

Eliane Aurelie Mbende, a young female doctoral student in oral medicine at the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences of University Yaoundé 1, will speak through a video interview which will be broadcast during the panel.

The webinar that will be organized in collaboration between the World Bank and AllAfrica Global Media will have a fitting end with the show by the group BANLIEU’ZART that will pay tribute to young girls and women of the continent.

Contacts:

For AllAfrica Global Media: Bacary DABO (bdabo@allafrica.com)/

For the World Bank: Aby K. Toure (akonate@worldbank.org)