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Women are the missing link for Africa's development
John Mutumburanzou
February 23, 2010

The common mistake which disciples and lieutenants of neo-patriarchy theory and practice make is to jettison and totally disregard, albeit at a prima facie level and basis, the credible assertion that women mothers are the missing link for Africa-s development. In their vehement denial, the neo-patriarchy theorists and practitioners sink back into history and peddle old, tired and irrelevant mantra of how Europe underdeveloped Africa and consequently the need for reparations as an answer to Africa-s woes. Whilst Walter Rodney-s literature is arguably critical in as much as it tries to explain Africa-s underdevelopment, it ceases to be a useful piece of art in as much as it willingly and wittingly fails to acknowledge how men fathers plunder and pillage women mother-s material and human resources often for their self aggrandizement. This, they do, in total ignorance of the fact that there cannot be African development without the full and meaningful participation of women mothers.

Africa-s underdevelopment, (not underdevelopment), has been conspicuous by the absence of women mothers as the condition sine qua non for development. First, Africa does not seem and is far from appreciating the reality that 'educate a woman, you have educated a nation.- This therefore translates to the truth that a nation-s education level is a direct reflection of the education women possess. Women mothers give us all they have to make us all what we are today and what we are going to be tomorrow. Secondly, Africa-s underdevelopment smacks of glaring and deplorable total exclusion of women in the ownership and control of the means of production: land, labour, capital, entrepreneurship.

A few of the women who own and control the means of production in Africa have either intimate and mutual relationship with men father who are themselves in powerful positions or do so by proxy. Thirdly, women mothers- role as child bearers, cultivators, n-angas, midwives inter alia has not received due recognition and attention from the preponderantly men father dominated society. More so, the much so talked about women co-operatives of sewing, knitting cookery among others have only helped, contrary to the so called women empowerment, to lock up and confine women in the private sphere.

Through these projects, the lives of African women have been a disgusting tale of perpetual domesticity. Fourthly, there are no tangible efforts on the part of African governments to engender African development. Despite the fact that most African governments are signatories to international pieces of legislation like Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) etcetera, which have tried to come up with some legislative framework in order to guarantee the rights of women, few notable steps have been taken to incorporate this into domestic laws of respective African countries. In cases where such international laws have been incorporated into domestic laws of respective African laws, implementation of such laws has suffered acute paralysis and excruciating epilepsy.

In this abstract, I argue that whereas Africa-s underdevelopment has arguably been as a result of the West, Africa-s underdevelopment is a sordid tale of a self-inflicted injury. It is a sad story, which took shoots after the whole of Africa shook itself off from the manacles of colonization. It is a tale, which is happening after emerging victorious from a protracted war that claimed lives of both men fathers and women mothers. It is a story that is taking place in contemporary Africa in homes, at the workplaces and everywhere despite the sweet victory that promised a bumper harvest for all.

I argue that the failure by Africa to embrace women mothers in the development process is Africa-s major undoing. In this treatise, I deliberately used phrases 'women mothers- and 'men fathers- for specific purposes, which I shall explain in the next epistle.

*John Mutumburanzou is a development practitioner who is working for a childcare and rights based International Non-Governmental Organization. His areas of interest are children and youths development, gender, rural development, disaster management, governance and development research. Contact him at johnmutumburanzou@yahoo.co.uk

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