Interview with Ms Fati N’zi-Hassane, Head of Human Capital & Institutions Development

1. Please enlighten us as to why, on a personal level, you are passionate about women’s empowerment on the continent?

Ever since I became an adult, I have always been very interested about promoting mechanisms that can help societies reach more equality. Inequalities come in many forms: social inequalities, inequalities based on disabilities, on racial or ethnic background, even on political opinions and sexual orientation. However, gender inequality is what I consider being the mother of inequalities. It is one we get exposed to everywhere, starting with our own family environments and we are socialised to accept it as a fact. I believe it is because as a society we tolerate gender inequality, that we are more prone to accept all other inequalities.

I am from the diaspora and was raised outside the continent until I reached adolescence. When we came back to Niger, my sisters and I were struck by the status of women and how society was depriving them of opportunities to reach their potential. At the same time, society was consequently depriving itself of women’s contribution, which I found to be counterproductive!

We spent a number of years in Niamey before we went abroad for our studies. As we were living there, our parents would (almost always) support us in challenging some of the social norms and help us create space for us to breathe as young girls and women.

2. As Head of Human Capital and Institutions Development, what are the priorities in your division for women’s empowerment?

As much as some specific actions are needed, women’s empowerment is a matter that should run across all our activities. Women represent roughly half of the population, so they form half of the African citizens the Human Capital and Institutions Development Division is supposed to serve. Moreover, our impact on the ground should not accentuate harmful gender dynamics but rather contribute to reverse them, and this in every area: Economic Integration, Industrialisation and Economic Sustainability.

Our priority is to secure resources and develop a straightforward programme document, a compact portfolio of initiatives, projects and tools to advance gender equality internally, to support all programmatic divisions in promoting gender equality through their own delivery, and also, to develop more in-house projects targeting harmful gender dynamics.

In doing so, we are obviously guided by the African Union’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) strategy. We will align with African Union institutions and Member States to advance the priorities of this strategic framework.

3. Are there any specific initiatives that AUDA-NEPAD is undertaking to support women that have been affected by COVID-19?

Under Health, Nutrition, and Skills and Employment, the activities that were pre-existing prior to COVID-19 are implemented with an intention to reach some gender representation targets. We have also redesigned some of our activities under Agricultural Technical Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) for Women Project to mitigate the effect of COVID-19 on the women in agricultural value chains in the six countries where the project is being currently implemented.

4. Kindly highlight some of the key results that AUDA-NEPAD has achieved in the past year towards the advancement of women in Africa.

Through the ATVET for Women project, we have developed gender-sensitive curricula for farmers in strategic agricultural value chains in six countries.

We also partnered with the International Food Policy Research Institute to conduct an in-depth evaluation on the impact of ATVET Women in Malawi and Benin. The results of the study were published at the end of 2020 and have allowed us and our partners to better understand how this project not only strengthens women economic empowerment but more importantly, contributes to developing women’s agency.

5. What is your key message, as an African woman, to other women on the rest of the continent?

I lean on the African Union GEWE strategy I was referring to earlier. The strategy recognises that “patriarchal systems are at the heart of gender inequality”. The reason I am mentioning this is that we, as privileged women (and being able to read this is already a form of privilege), tend to entertain some blind spots when it comes to gender inequality. Because we were able to get an education, secure a job and protect ourselves from violent situations and environments, we tend to minimise the challenges of living as a woman in a patriarchal society. We even sometimes take all the credit to say “women can do everything if they put their head to it” - implying “just like I did”-  ignoring the fact that not all women have the same material, financial, social and emotional resources that allowed us to get ahead.

My message would be that instead of trying to secure a comfortable position in the system, we should all question the system and be part of the change for a better and more inclusive society.

To quote the American poet Maya Angelou: “The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”