 Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us here today. Thank you to my panel, the audience here, and also our audience watching us live online at weforum.org. This is an issue briefing on gender parity in Africa. It's a seriously serious and important subject, and one that is central to the whole Africa transformation story that has been running through this meeting and previous meetings of the World Economic Forum in Africa. I'm going to introduce my panel, first of all. I'm going to introduce my panel, first of all, each of whom have a very, very valid role to play, and it's a very active participant in the drive to move forward with gender empowerment. First of all is Pwmzili Malambo Uncuka, the Executive Director of UN Women. I'm very proud to say she's a co-chair of this year's meetings, playing an active role in many public and private sessions, working the agenda forward of UN Women. Gerardine Fraser-Moddakete of a special envoy on gender of the African Development Bank, and Gerardine has been working on a number of issues at the bank, including a report which I believe was announced yesterday looking at inclusion of women in boardrooms in Africa. Last but not least, Sadi Zahidi is the Head of Gender Parity and Human Capital at the World Economic Forum. My colleague and who is responsible for all of the forum's efforts to drive forward gender empowerment and bridge the gender gap, including our global gender gap report, which we publish every year in October, which measures over 140 countries on how well they're doing at addressing issues that affect the gender gap. First of all, I'm going to pass over to Pwmzili to please give us some ideas, perhaps maybe give us an update because it was in Davos in January this year that you launched the HeForShe campaign that was so successful. Yes, thank you. For those who don't know, the HeForShe campaign is a campaign by UN Women reaching out to men and boys to create a space for men and boys to become activists for gender equality. Our take is that it is a luxury for us not to engage men positively and not to create a platform for men to express positive masculinity. It is about taking one half of humanity to support actively the other half of humanity in the best interest of all. In Davos, what we launched was what we called 10x10x10, which is targeting heads of state, heads of universities, and heads of corporations, because our emphasis is that we have to delegate our parts on gender. I think it's unfair to expect women ministers of women's department to be the ones that are leading on gender because they are underfunded and sometimes they are not senior enough in those governments. A head of state, a CEO, a head of the university, those are the people on whom this issue is going because it's a cross violation of rights of people under their watch. So when we launched and in relation to Africa, we wanted to target countries that had massive issues that hinder the progress of women and girls, female genital mutilation, early marriages, access to education. And we wanted countries that would, a head of state, that will, as part of their Hifushi commitment, commit to do something about one of the biggest issues in his time in his country. So we have had heads of states coming with issues and said, no, not good enough, you have to rise up to the occasion. So now we have Malawi on ending early child marriage as one country that we are considering seriously and we are going to support them because now they have passed the legislation and they are working on the detail and we are supporting them for the deal. We have approached Sierra Leone to be elite countries in ending FGM because during the Ebola crisis they suspended it. So we would like them to keep the ban and that would be far reaching for that country. And so we are therefore going to be targeting different countries and asking them to do something fundamental and that becomes the head of states Hifushi commitment. Thank you. Gerardine, tell us a bit about your report. Thank you very much. We launched a report Wednesday morning called Where Are The Women on Boards and this is a report that's looking at boards of listed companies and it provides, it looks at three categories. It looks at large cap companies, looks at mid cap companies, actually four categories, small and micro and in essence quite predictably women are lagging behind in terms of theirs being on the boards of listed companies. But let me start with some good news. Africa is actually ranking at the top of emerging regions as it relates to women board membership in large cap companies because Africa is at 14.4% of women on the boards of companies in a country as compared to 9.8% for Asia Pacific, 5.6% for Latin America and 1% for the Middle East. Of course Africa is a region ranks third because it follows Europe and North America. On the other side, one third of African companies still have boards without a single woman on them and two thirds of companies actually have very small presence of women at the table. Now some African countries have already taken corrective measures that aim at breaking through the glass ceiling as it relates to women on boards of listed companies and this is particularly countries like Kenya and South Africa who have put in place mandates for representation of women on boards of state-owned companies. They've not quite got there as it relates to private companies unlike India and various other European countries. We also know that putting this on the table is actually a no brainer if you want to change the bottom line of companies because there have been various studies that have been done in recent years, whether we look at Credit Suisse or McKinsey that's actually pointed to the fact that diverse boards, companies with diverse boards actually have better bottom lines and so on. So I can say a lot but I think you should ask questions. Second issue at our annual meeting we launched a report that we called Empowering African Women an Agenda for Action and in essence this is an index for 52 out of the 54 countries that looks at three categories. Women as producers, women and human development and women as active citizens and leaders and this shows us how African countries are doing on these areas. You can see the top 10 and the bottom 10, you can see all 52 so just provoking some interest on two reports we've brought out and I think when we look at the index I know that WEF has also worked on various indices. Thank you very much. Thanks and Sadia, as Geraldine says, you produce every year the global gender gap report. Give us some highlights and some trends that you've identified in Africa because it's a different picture to other regions in the world. Thank you Ali. The index that the World Economic Forum is producing is trying to look at four different areas, health, education, economic participation and political empowerment. And there is an interesting difference in this particular region in the sense that in most of the world the global picture, the global average looks like most of the world has closed health gaps, most of the world has closed education gaps and the real problems seem to be on the economic participation and in political empowerment. And interestingly not that the trend is vastly different but it is somewhat different in the sense that there's still actually quite a long way to go on the education gaps, on some of the health gaps. But in terms of economic participation there do seem to be two fairly different sets of trends. There are countries, this is the only region in the world where there are countries where women are participating in the labour force in greater numbers than men. And so in some ways this is a massive advantage compared to other countries. And at the same time that employment tends to be very low skilled labour and that's something that's going to have to change not just for those women themselves but also for Africa's competitiveness in the long term. Some quick highlights in terms of the rankings, so Rwanda is the highest ranked country from the region at number 7 out of the 142 overall in the world, followed by Burundi and South Africa that are also in the top 20. And towards the very bottom of the rankings there is Mali at 138 and Chad at 140 and Nigeria one of the other big economies is at 114. In addition to this work we've also started to do some industry benchmarking and we're trying to tie that up to trends around the future of jobs. And while this is not yet a public report that's going to be coming out in September, some of the early results show that like many other parts of the world there are going to be massive disruptions, many changes to the labour markets in this region. There will be major changes in particular industry sectors. What we're going to need a lot more of are skills that relate to technology, data analysis, just a lot more of that STEM education will be needed. And that is something that there is a lack of not just overall in the region but in particular in terms of gender. So there could be a new emerging gender gap unless we watch out for that and make the changes today that are required to invest in STEM education for women. Oli, I can perhaps stop here or I can share a little bit more about the best practice. Well, Sally, I've got some questions so maybe give me a chance and also our audience here. Anyone here have any questions they'd like to pose at this stage? There's a microphone coming. I'm a freelance journalist for various publications. I'd like to just check, I was quite encouraged to hear about women ministries, whether that is actually the way to go or whether you need to sort of integrate it across the board because it tends to be sort of tokenism when you have a woman ministry. Are you advocating to sort of phase them out or do you think they still have a role? Geraldine, if I can just ask you on the, how are you advocating? Are you showing sort of examples where women have been really great winners on boards and as CEOs to sort of propel this board as well? Thanks. No, I'm not advocating that we do away with women's ministries but we acknowledge that the effectiveness of women's ministries is a very mixed back. Because there are countries where, for instance, Chile, the minister for women is the one who has passed legislation on abortion. In many countries it would be the minister of justice or the minister of health because in a country like that, as you can imagine, it's a very hard issue. She's taking very hard issues. She's taking pay gap and taking a lot of heat. So it's a very substantive ministry. Of course my predecessor is a president there. So you can make a woman's ministry formidable but it's not the case in many countries. And also it is not fair that heads of states are not the ones who are taking the heat. The most senior person in a country or in a company because the point we're trying to make is that this is a mainstream issue in a company, in a country, in a university, in the community. So it must not be packed on the side with just a limited number of persons or of people or one person to deal with. So you still need gender mainstreaming to the extent that you need someone that follows on it every day so that when we mainstream people are not taking the box. Women's ministries have got a critical role to play in the monitoring of the other ministries. That is why in the Sustainable Development Goals we have a goal on women, goal five, which tackles some of the hard issues but we've also mainstreamed. So cover the base. Let's do it both for now. Thank you. On examples of women on boards and strong CEOs, I think there's a number of examples that we can look at and we clearly are going to see how to build on it. But if you, for example, look at someone like Albertina Cacana, who was the COO of the PIC, who's now with the platinum people. I'll remember exactly. No, she's not with Anglo-plats. I'll remember and come back to give you the specific name. If you look at key CEOs on boards, they've really proved to be outstanding. But secondly, we've proposed that we should actually develop one database of women to ensure that we'll have something to draw on as a supply from a supply side point of view where, you know, boards across the continent and globally can actually look and say, here's a database of women to draw from. But secondly, the stock exchange listings and we want to place this on the stock exchange should actually be made public so that it's very clear what the composition is of men and women on boards. They should also reflect on what the competency base of all members of boards are. And this should be mandated for public reporting going forward to just encourage this to happen. There's also a recommendation in this particular report that governments should, in some instances, establish commissions or a commission that could also provide a report and serve as a monitoring structure but actually really support, you know, a pipeline developing. And then thirdly, looking at capital markets, authorities and securities exchanges and see that they also have the responsibility of reporting on this and bringing women on boards. Last thing that I want to raise is this is really doable. It's in the interest of companies, as I've said in the beginning, to have diverse boards. This is the route to go. And then separately, in support of what UN Women is doing, we've also, just at our last annual meeting last week, we've established, formalised an African ministers of finance community of practice with a focus on financing for gender results. Because we feel it's well and good to have other parts of government focusing on this. But if those who are responsible for the money doesn't actually have a clear focus, it won't happen. This community of practice will be chaired by the president of the African Development Bank at every annual meeting. So from now on, henceforth, that will happen. And that's in support of the larger goal. So I think future presidents, like current incumbent, should also be the foresee champions moving forward. Absolutely. Great. Okay, we'll take that. I'll just add that this community of practice, Africa is also more advanced than other regions. Gender responsive budgeting is one of the five priorities of UN Women. So we have been working with countries across the board. But Africa is the one that is as advanced to the extent that the African Development Bank is actually as hands on. But we have a global community of practice which has ministers from all over the world and we are co-chairing that with the World Bank. Okay. Now I want to come on in a couple of moments about Saudi's observation that in fact in Africa, it's the education, the health which is the biggest gap and possibly counterintuitively to the rest of the world. But first of all, this gentleman in the front row. I just want to find out the age. Sir, can you give us your name please? My name is Arthur from Eden FM. I just want to find out maybe did you take into consideration the age of women who are heading up those businesses when you were doing the report? Yeah, we didn't really look at the ages. We rather looked at the sizes of companies. But if you look in the report itself, there are the names of women board directors of companies and there's actually an interesting spread. Quite a few that are younger than the two of us at least and there are those that may go on the other side as well. So it's something to consider moving forward. Okay. So let's just develop that thinking a little bit. I mean, it's almost as if Africa has leapfrogged and done some of this tough stuff quite well. It's got women into positions of ministerial power and heads of state and government. It's doing relatively well in terms of board positions, but at the basic level of the education and the health which so many other countries and regions in the world are tackling first as one of their first basic challenges that's not happening to the same degree. Is that way you should be prioritising? Well, I think if you were to ask me what would be the two things that a must do for gender equality to be a change and to be substantive girls education and reproductive rights and reproductive health. Those two a must do in large number and we have to correct them. And so even though we've spoke about the he-fishing and all of these issues, this is in addition to us also looking at these issues of education. But of course in the case of the UN UNESCO is the lead agency, but we are right there pushing for girls education as well as women's education. Geraldine? Yes, I agree with that. And in addition I think for me it's looking at the education, the skills, keeping girls in school, but economic empowerment is critical as well. If we want women to have agency they must have choice. To have choice they need to have independent incomes. So I think we see it as all part of the bigger ones, so building on that. And the last thing, just going back, I mentioned Albertina Caecana. She's a CEO of the Royal Buffer King Holdings Propriety and with Impala Platinum. I just thought I should get that. Thanks. Any comments? Just perhaps building on that. There is a sort of a talent value chain approach that can be taken and the basis of that is that for health education, but then ensuring that those are the right kinds of skillsets, ensuring that there is then opportunity in the labour market, ensuring there's the opportunity to go all the way through to leadership. And there are success stories. So a number of the companies that the forum has been working with have success stories from around the world and particular to this region because they do have to be relevant to the local context. And what we've tried to do in some other parts of the world is create public-private partnerships that learn from those success stories, set a particular target and try to meet that target in just three years' time. And we've been relatively successful in Mexico, Turkey, Japan and Korea, massive economies that have set that 10% target to get more women into the labour force and two years into those experiments where we're more than halfway there for most of those countries. So we're hoping that in partnership with UN Women and with others, that model can be adopted across this region too. Great. Before we close, I'd just like to maybe ask for an insight into what you've been doing this week. We're coming towards the end of the meeting, and this is the meeting for public-private cooperation. What have you been involved in that in your mind helps drive forward your agenda? Well, I have been involved in discussions that are very woman-specific in dealing with gender parity. My key message to choose the things I focus on was on closing the gender pay gap because the audience here is people who pay salaries. It's not enough to be an equal opportunity employer. You must be an equal opportunity remunerator. This is something that companies can do something about. Right now the gap is 24%. In Africa it's 30%. So there is some work to do there. The second thing that I've been trying to disseminate is the issue of unpaid care work. Making sure that companies recognize how much that is a setback and the fact that a combination of governments and private sector can play a critical role in helping us to recognize unpaid care work and create industries out of it like childcare that would employ women, release women to work, provide early childhood education, and in the process, therefore, support the children to have access to this important resource at an early age. I've also used my time here to advocate for the embrace of SDG with the gender lens. Geraldine, same question. I think I've attended quite a number of sessions in addition to having the launch. The one this morning looked at the whole area of natural resources as well. I must say that gender equality is something that's cross-cutting. You can go into any session on any issue. At the end of the day, human capital is quite central to that. Talking about human capital, you need to link it back to gender equality. I think it's very important for WEF African, this has come through, to appreciate the fact that you can't talk about inclusive growth of the African continent or green growth if you don't take into account women on the African continent, girls and youth. I think that message is really coming to the top and unlike at any other time, I think this WEF Africa has looked at it in a more serious way. So the events were not at some peripheral hotel that was five kilometres away and on the margins of things. It's at the centre and that's what we'd like to see. Of course we're very proud of this meeting to be the meeting with the highest gender ratio of any World Economic Forum meeting this year anywhere in the world. Not where it should be at 50%, of course, but it's only 6%. Africa is leading the way. Saad, any final closing comments from yourself? It sounds like you've been busy this week. I would end on a positive note. I think I'm happy to hear that our participants seem to think that a gender has been more part of the core agenda than it has been in the past. The feedback from most of our participants is that the fact that we are talking about this in a very serious way, the fact that the issue is being recognised as a core economic issue for the region is already a sign of change and now we need to translate that awareness into implementation and that's really going to be our takeaway for the coming year. Great. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you to our audience online. This session is now closed.