Prompted by a recent report which shows the “Gender Gap Widening in Rwanda’s Largest Employment Sector,” Professor Nnamdi Madichie, Coordinator of UoK’s Center for Economic Governance and Leadership (CEGL) has called for an urgent re-alignment of the private sector from a governance perspective.
As the report highlighted, the World Economic Forum 2022 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Rwanda first in closing the gender gap in Africa and number six world-wide (in line with improving gender balance, and creating equal development opportunities for both men and women). However, various monitoring findings by Gender Monitoring Office (GMO) and other stakeholders indicate that the private sector still lags behind in gender equality.
It goes on to report that “while the sector employs almost 90% of the total labour force in the country, the number of women is still low especially in technical fields.” The statistics below capture the extent of the misalignment:
Women only own 38% of micro business, 32% of small businesses, 21% of medium enterprises and only 15% of large businesses. There are still gaps in access to finance.
A gender mainstreaming strategy for the private sector (2020-2024) has been developed to guide gender equality interventions in the private sector.
Since his appointment as Coordinator of Centre for Economic Governance and Leadership at the University of Kigali since February 9, 2022, Professor Nnamdi Madichie has continued his research and impact on the role and place of women in the economic development of Africa. He not long sought to summarise his research in and article entitled “Celebrating the Commonwealth Women’s Forum 2022.”
Professor Madichie has participated in a range of workshops in the past year – from the 8th Session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development, organized by the Economic Commission for Africa, which culminated in the Kigali Declaration. Discussions at the forum were with a view to the accelerated implementation of the 2030 Agenda, the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and Goals of Agenda 2063 in line with the theme: “Building forward better: A green, inclusive and resilient Africa poised to achieve the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063”.
In June 2022, and coinciding with the Commonwealth Women’s Forum held in Kigali, Rwanda, Prof. Madichie was also invited to participate in an event themed “promoting gender accountability in the private sector” jointly organised by The Rwanda Chamber of Women Entrepreneurs (RCWE), an umbrella organization established in 2005 under the auspices of the Rwanda Private Sector Federation (PSF).
RCWE was established with the mission to improve the socio-economic status of women entrepreneurs in both urban and rural areas by creating opportunities for their development through enhanced economic participation.
More recently, he mentored a woman graduate candidate for the Master of Science in Project Management Programme to present a research paper at the International Stream of the University of Fort Hare – Research Week of Excellence in November 2022. Her presentation was based on her Master’s Dissertation, which he supervised. The student highlighted some of the challenges facing construction projects in Rwanda, which included economic governance and leadership concerns.
Professor Madichie is currently developing contents for a master’s degree public policy module on “Economic Governance and Management,” at the School of Graduate Studies, University of Kigali. He plans to draw upon the notion that economic governance encompasses two broad areas – macroeconomic management (including aggregate fiscal) and microeconomic management (relating to the policies that determine the private-sector operating environment and contract enforcement processes etc.).
This is against the backdrop of the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1) is the medium term national strategy (2017 – 2024) in Rwanda’s 7-Year Government Programme capturing the first four years of Vision 2050 and domesticated for the SDGs as well as other continental and regional commitments. The NST1 is built on 3 interlocking pillars: economic transformation; social transformation; and transformational governance.