{"id":1138,"date":"2015-05-27T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T11:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2016-10-28T13:15:51","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T12:15:51","slug":"women-for-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/05\/27\/women-for-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Women for Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Last week I visited <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mujeresporafrica.es\/en\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Mujeres por Africa<\/em> (Women for Africa)<\/a>, abbreviated as MxA. Women for Africa is a Foundation aimed at contributing to <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=644\" target=\"_blank\">African development through its women<\/a>.<\/strong> I had a great conversation with its initiator and President, Maria-Teresa Fernandez de la Vega (former Vice President of the Spanish government, 2004-2010) who shares a\u00a0passion for Africa, and the vision to contribute to its development from within.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1139\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1139\" style=\"width: 495px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/05\/mujer-MXA_RGB.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1139 \" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/05\/mujer-MXA_RGB.jpg\" alt=\"Mujeres por Africa corporate image\" width=\"495\" height=\"331\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/05\/mujer-MXA_RGB.jpg 530w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/05\/mujer-MXA_RGB-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/05\/mujer-MXA_RGB-500x334.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 495px) 100vw, 495px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1139\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mujeres por Africa corporate image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Women for Africa rests on a few important principles: its activities have to involve knowledge transfer, have a multiplier effect, and foster socio-economic development. This is so that their projects have a long-term, durable impact on a large scale.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Foundation\u2019s activities are grouped into 5 areas: education, knowledge, health, economic development, and empowerment.<\/strong> Closest to my activities are those that focus on economic development and knowledge. Here are two highlights, one from each of these two areas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mujeresporafrica.es\/en\/content\/women%E2%80%99s-green-yard-gambia\" target=\"_blank\">Women&#8217;s fields in Gambia<\/a>&#8221; creates agricultural cooperatives run by women. Its purpose is <strong>&#8220;to bring together the female owners of horticultural smallholdings in order to boost all activities geared towards making the most of the cooperative members&#8217; agricultural land<\/strong>. Not only does the project promote the role of women as agricultural entrepreneurs, it also contributes to increasing economic activity in Africa\u2019s rural areas thus <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=719\" target=\"_blank\">reducing imbalances in urban centers<\/a>. <strong>Started as a pilot project in The Gambia, it&#8217;s been extended to Ghana and reaches close to 900 women.<\/strong> This program may contribute to changing the situation. <strong>It has \u00a0enormous potential to increase socioeconomic development across sub-Saharan Africa.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mujeresporafrica.es\/en\/content\/science-women\" target=\"_blank\">Science by women<\/a>&#8221; supports and increases the scientific and technological capabilities of African women<\/strong>. Africa is the continent with the widest scientific and technological development gender gap. <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=871\" target=\"_blank\">African women are very capable<\/a>, including in terms of making important scientific and technological advancements (did you see my post last week on <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1126\" target=\"_blank\">traffic control robots developed by a female engineer <\/a>in Congo?). <strong>By equipping African women scientists with training and an<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=766\" target=\"_blank\"> innovative spirit<\/a>, the program contributes to <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=861\" target=\"_blank\">Africa&#8217;s transition <\/a>to a knowledge-based and innovation-led economy.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Isn\u2019t it worth raising awareness of these programs? Here&#8217;s my call to action: Women for Africa \u00a0now has an open <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mujeresporafrica.es\/senior-research-fellowships\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Request for Applications for Visiting Senior Research Fellowships<\/a> in Spain\u2019s &#8220;Severo Ochoa&#8221; Centers of Excellence. <strong>Please spread the word so that the message reaches as many African women scientists as possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I visited Mujeres por Africa (Women for Africa), abbreviated as MxA. Women for Africa is a Foundation aimed at contributing to African development through its women. I had a great conversation with its initiator and President, Maria-Teresa Fernandez de la Vega (former Vice President of the Spanish government, 2004-2010) who shares a\u00a0passion for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":1139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[93551],"tags":[85375,279,121,45535,80762,240,73161,1267],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-women-in-africa","tag-african-women","tag-agriculture","tag-economic-growth","tag-engineering","tag-gambia","tag-innovation","tag-robots","tag-social-development","megacategoria-mc-africa","megacategoria-mc-women-in-business"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1146,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions\/1146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}