African Stakeholders Push Practical Pathways For Gender-inclusive Infrastructure

Infrastructure experts, authorities officials, academics, and improvement practitioners, person stressed the urgent request for Africa to integrate women’s voices successful infrastructure delivery, informing that exclusion risks undermining sustainable maturation and deepening inequality.

The telephone was made astatine a high-level store themed “Sustaining Gender Lens Infrastructure Delivery Agenda successful Africa: Policy, Implementation & Partnerships,” convened by the Women successful Construction and Architecture (WICA) successful collaboration with the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development (CESD), ARUA Centre of Excellence for Urbanisation and Habitable Cities astatine the University of Lagos.

The gathering brought unneurotic stakeholders from Nigeria, Zambia, Malawi, Ghana, Tanzania, and Cameroon to research strategies for mainstreaming sex successful infrastructure planning, design, procurement, and policy.

Delivering the invited address, Convener and President of WICA, Dr. Olajumoke Akiode, said infrastructure is ne'er gender-neutral and indispensable beryllium designed to bespeak the antithetic realities of men and women. She noted that the nonsubjective of the store was to analyse the “where” and “how” of sex argumentation implementation and forge partnerships to embed a sex lens successful infrastructure transportation crossed Africa.

“We indispensable perpetrate to creating a monitoring, valuation and benchmarking template to guarantee the sex lens infrastructure docket for Nigeria and Africa has the close policies driving them, the corporate volition to instrumentality them, and the partnerships to prolong them beyond our lifetimes,” she urged, calling for continental collaboration.

Guest talker and Director astatine the Federal Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, FCT Abuja, Chioma Wogu-Ogbonna, emphasised bridging the spread betwixt argumentation and practice. She pointed to the request for participatory plan to seizure women’s voices, gender-responsive procurement policies that allocate a quota of contracts to women-owned firms, and targeted capacity-building for engineers, architects, and policymakers.

“When women were consulted connected the determination of agrarian autobus stops, incidents of harassment dropped importantly and mobility improved,” she said, urging governments to institutionalise specified inclusive planning.

The Director of the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development, ARUA Centre of Excellence for Urbanization and Habitable Cities, University of Lagos, Prof. Timothy Nubi, besides stressed the urgent request for gender-conscious infrastructure improvement successful Nigeria. He noted that portion infrastructure improvement is captious for economical growth, it often has uneven impacts crossed society, with women and girls disproportionately affected.

“Integrating sex considerations into infrastructure readying is not conscionable fair, it is indispensable for promoting economical empowerment, safety, and societal inclusion,” Nubi stated.

Recommended strategies see designing infrastructure that prioritises women’s safety, promoting their information successful task readying and implementation, providing grooming and capacity-building opportunities, and monitoring the societal interaction of projects.
“Gender-conscious infrastructure improvement is cardinal to gathering inclusive cities and boosting nationalist productivity,” helium added.

The President of the Federation of Construction Industry, Vincent Barrah, was besides astatine the lawsuit to drum enactment for inclusive infrastructure improvement crossed the continent. Stakeholders noted that governments indispensable supply enabling policies and budgetary allocation, portion the backstage assemblage should thrust concern done gender-smart financing, and civilian nine indispensable clasp stakeholders accountable.

Barrah said determination is advancement successful sex policies, with donor-backed projects attempting inclusion and advocacy gaining strength.
“But determination remains a disconnect betwixt argumentation and implementation. Too often, gender-inclusivity is treated arsenic a container to tick successful task proposals, not arsenic a halfway doctrine that guides design, budgeting, execution, and evaluation. Infrastructure that ignores women is not neutral — it is biased, it is exclusionary, and it deepens inequality,” helium warned.

From Zambia, Coordinator of WICA Zambia Chapter, Dr. Chishimba Kathryn Mufana, emphasised the value of cross-country collaboration and cognition speech to tackle communal challenges successful architecture and engineering.

Representing Tanzania, Ester Christopher discussed the country’s revised Construction Industry Policy 2025, which present embeds women’s inclusion successful procurement.
“Women contractors are being awarded large projects, showing that argumentation shifts tin construe to existent opportunities,” she said.

Also, the contiguous past President of the Malawi Institute of Architecture, Catheri...