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<p>News has broken from the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) during his trip to the DRC on Wednesday that the Ebola outbreak in the country, which is the second worst in history, is finally, &#8220;on the retreat&#8221;. He went on to warn that the risk was still high and that there was no room for complacency, but is this the sign of relief that the region has been waiting for? Coordinator of UN Emergency Ebola Response, David Gressly joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Ebola outbreak 2nd largest since 2014-2016: 2000 lives lost

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<p>World leaders made new commitments totalling $932.1 million and announced new campaigns to end extreme poverty. To discuss this – on the sidelines of the Global Citizen Festival in New York, CNBC Africa&#8217;s Wole Famurewa caught up with Deputy Secretary General of United Nations, Amina Mohammed for more.</p>


World leaders pledge $932mn in poverty fight

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<p>The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has called for a decade of action to deliver the Global Goals by 2030 as next year marks the 10-year countdown to achieving these Global Goals. On the side-lines of the on-going Global Citizen Festival Week CNBC Africa’s Wole Famurewa caught up with the Chairman of Global Citizens Nigeria Tunde Folawiyo,  and the Vice Chairman of the group, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, to explore ways to achieve these global goals in Nigeria.</p>


Nigeria quest to eradicate poverty by 2030 with Global Citizen festival

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<p>Climate Change cannot be put off for decades. It is here and now, impacting countries across Africa from Zimbabwe to Zambia. Recognising this Standard Bank has joined the coalition of 130 global financial firms in agreeing to align their business with international efforts to address climate change and other environmental issues. The group that signed on to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Banking represents $47 trillion in assets. Sola David-Borha, Standard Bank Group’s Chief Executive for Africa Regions joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


How banks can align their business strategies to fighting climate change

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<p>195 countries agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions when they signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. To understand how and if the continent’s development is sustainable and in line with the agreement, Dr. Richard Munang, Regional Climate Change Coordinator Innovative Climate Action and Development of Africa Office at the UN environment joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


195 countries join hands with signature of Paris Agreement on Climate Change pact

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<p>The World Bank predicts that the amount of remittances sent by Africa&#8217;s diaspora to Sub-Saharan Africa will reach the $50 billion mark by 2020, now as world leaders are set to converge in New York for the 74th United Nations General Assembly, a group of the African diaspora will use the opportunity to engage continental leaders on investment opportunities on the continent with an aim of moving away from just remittances to making investments on the continent. Gbenga Omatayo, Founder of USAfricaHub joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Africa’s diaspora: How the continent must move from remittances to investments


<p>MAPUTO (Reuters) &#8211; The United Nations will grant Mozambique and the Comoros Islands $13 million in emergency funds to help provide food and water and repair damage to infrastructure, the organisation said late on Sunday, after the second cyclone in a month slammed into the region.</p>



<p>Cyclone Kenneth crashed into the northern province of the southern African nation on Thursday just as it was recovering from Cyclone Idai that hit further south last month.</p>



<p>Idai, the worst tropical storm to hit the region in decades, moved into neighbouring Zimbabwe and Malawi, killing more than 1,000 people.</p>



<p>Weather experts are warning that Kenneth could dump twice as much rain on northern Mozambique as Idai did. It has already killed five people as it unleashed heavy rains and flooding that has seen rivers burst their banks and smash whole villages.</p>



<p>Cyclone Kenneth hit the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado late on Thursday, flattening entire villages with winds of up to 280 kph (174 mph).</p>



<p>The World Bank estimates Mozambique and other countries affected by the tropical storm will need over $2 billion to recover.</p>



<p>Mozambique also faces a cholera epidemic after the cyclone wiped out water and sanitation facilities.</p>



<p>“This new allocation of Central Emergency Response Fund funds will help humanitarian partners to scale up the response to address the needs of those most vulnerable in the aftermath of Cyclone Kenneth”, said UN Humanitarian Chief Mark Lowcock in a statement.</p>



<p>Earlier in April The International Monetary Fund granted the southern African nation a $118.2 million credit facility.</p>



<p>Writing by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by Toby Chopra</p>


Mozambique to receive $13 million from UN for Cyclone Kenneth damage

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<p>The United Nations says families in Nigeria spend approximately 20 percent of GDP per capita on preschool-related expenditures annually.</p>


Improving quality of primary education in Nigeria

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<p>As the United Nations and World Health Organization prepare to observe World Health day on the 7th of this month, Chike Nwangwu, CEO of NOIPOLLS joins CNBC Africa to discuss ways to deepening health insurance in Nigeria.</p>


Deepening healthcare insurance in Nigeria

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<p>According to the United Nations, lack of adequate infrastructure and access to finance are some of the challenges hampering investment in Africa and lower the level of economic transformation despite strong economic growth. In East Africa, corruption is cited as the biggest challenge. Christophe Charlier, Chairman of Renaissance Capital joins CNBC Africa to discuss this and the bank’s footprint in the region.</p>


Breaking investment roadblocks in East Africa

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<p>The World Bank Group together with the government of Kenya, France, and the United Nations are hosting the “One Planet Summit” which seeks to accelerate and focus attention on climate investments in line with the Paris Agreement objectives. The IFC has launched a report on the potential climate investments in cities for more CNBC Africa is joined by the IFC&#8217;s Vice President of Economics and Private Sector Development- Hans Peter Lankes.</p>


Kenya gears up for global climate change summit


<p class="has-background has-pale-cyan-blue-background-color"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting">This article is part of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
</a></p>



<p>As global leaders gathered this week the World Economic Forum to discuss some of the world’s most pressing issues, including inequality and poverty, many will share data to illustrate a phenomenon. However, countries that focus on creating prosperity and not just merely eradicating poverty react differently to data on poverty.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Alleviating poverty is not the same as creating prosperity </h2>



<p>Hard as it may be to believe, decades ago Singapore was very impoverished, and one of the main initiatives of the government was to educate its citizens. But when Dr. Goh Keng Swee, one of Singapore’s ministers, would see hundreds of children streaming out of school at the end of the day, instead of being happy, he was heartbroken. He and the Singaporean government understood that simply attending school wasn’t enough. What would the students do after they graduated? How would the economy create and sustain jobs for all these newly educated children? Those were the questions that Dr. Keng Swee was asking.</p>



<p>Focusing on creating prosperity – in contrast to focusing on alleviating poverty – compelled Dr. Keng Swee and the government to ask entirely different questions, pursue different activities and emphasize different metrics. Instead of mostly focusing on the data, they focused on the deeper underlying phenomena. And so, instead of primarily building schools, Singapore prioritized investments and innovation and attracted companies that created jobs. This decision increased the need for education.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://assets.weforum.org/editor/PgJhPxcQ_F0Wr8be8gWCr4ml-my97hhUyAuyaEzHdMo.jpg" alt="         "/></figure>



<p>As a result, Singapore has become one of the richest nations in the world with a GDP per capita of approximately $57,714. And today, not only do approximately 99% of people attend secondary school, but more than half go on to get a post-secondary school diploma. What would have happened if – as many nations do today – Singapore focused primarily on the data of how many children were educated? It might not be as successful today. The phenomena – the realities on the ground – drive the data.</p>



<p>With trillions of dollars spent in official development assistance over the past several decades, and hundreds of billions spent annually, we believe that if more nations focused on realities underlying the data, we would not only eradicate poverty in the next couple of decades, but we set nations on a path to creating long-term economic prosperity. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">
  What the data hides
</h2>



<p>Over the past three <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extreme-poverty-continues-but-has-slowed-world-bank">decades</a>, more than 1 billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty. The rate of global poverty is down from 37% in 1990 to approximately 10% <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-Since-1820.png">today</a>. But a vast majority of the people who have escaped poverty are from China (approximately <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-social-mobility.html">800 million</a> people) and to a lesser extent, India (approximately 200 million). </p>



<p>Poverty in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa is actually on the <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extreme-poverty-continues-but-has-slowed-world-bank">rise</a>, with no signs of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/extreme-poverty-concentrates-in-sub-saharan-africa-1537243201">slowing</a> down. In addition, nearly half the world’s population – 3.4 billion people – live on less than $5.50 a day and struggle to meet their basic needs. The problem is that this data can be deceptive. We are awash in data, and we do need this information. But data, metrics and statistics are simply representations of particular phenomena and are not the phenomena themselves. </p>



<p>Consider another example. The data shows that primary and secondary school enrolment rates are now almost on par with rates in high-income countries. That’s a good thing. However, what the data doesn’t illustrate as clearly is that the quality of education couldn’t be more different. In low- and middle-income countries, for instance, more than half the students in school (over 617 million) are not achieving minimum proficiency levels, according to a United Nations <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2017/09/more-than-half-of-children-and-youth-worldwide-not-learning-unesco/">study</a>. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number is about 90%. In addition, international assessments of literacy and numeracy show that the average student in a low-income country performs worse than 95% of the students in high-income countries. What this ultimately means is that students are attending school, but are not learning. This is important because programs, laws and investments can cause the statistics to nominally improve, even when reality is going in a different direction. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"> The importance of understanding the phenomena </h2>



<p>In most corporations, a very common measure of success for a firm is the return on net assets (RONA), which is the ratio of income divided by its assets. In essence, RONA tells us how well a company utilizes its assets. If the firm’s RONA goes up, one interpretation might be that customers are willing to pay higher prices for the company’s products. </p>



<p>But RONA can hide the real story. Managers, for instance, can manipulate the ratio by outsourcing as many activities as possible, thereby reducing the assets on their balance sheets. This causes RONA to go up as well. When a company outsources, say, the manufacturing, testing or distribution activity, the company is able to remove assets from its balance sheet, thereby increasing its RONA. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but it matters because it could be masking something far more worrying. In essence, what might seem to be, on paper, the story of a company that is thriving, could be more complex. A company might be able to operate with these inflated RONA numbers for years, but eventually the chickens come home to roost. By then, it is usually too late. Fewer corporations illustrate this better than Dell Computer.</p>



<p>Dell Computer hit its stride in the 1990s and quickly became one of the most successful and profitable computer companies in the world. But over time, in an attempt to continually improve its efficiency metrics and financial ratios such as RONA, the company outsourced many of its operations to a Taiwanese company, Asus. Profitability skyrocketed, and Dell analysts rewarded the company accordingly. The data looked good, but the phenomena behind the data – the innovative prowess of the company – didn’t. In 2005, after Dell had outsourced enough activities to Asus, effectively putting the company into business, Asus announced the creation of its own brand of computers. And the rest, as they say, became history. All along, the numbers had looked good to Dell. But what the numbers had not shown was the impact these decisions would have on Dell’s future.</p>



<p>In a similar way, the metrics of poverty might improve, but that doesn’t mean that the phenomena of poverty are getting better. It might even be getting worse. But it need not be this way. Countries can reliably and sustainably overcome poverty and, indeed many have; however, they did not do it mainly by trying to eradicate poverty. They did it by focusing on creating prosperity. On the surface, the difference between the two strategies may seem like mere semantics, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.</p>



<p>• <em>Clayton M Christensen, Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon are the co-authors of  </em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062851829/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0">The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty</a> <em>(Harper Collins, January 15, 2019). </em>                                     <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weforum.org%2Fagenda%2F2019%2F01%2Fpoverty-data-never-tells-the-whole-story%2F" target="_blank"></a><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?via=wef&amp;text=Poverty%20data%20never%20tells%20the%20whole%20story&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weforum.org%2Fagenda%2F2019%2F01%2Fpoverty-data-never-tells-the-whole-story%2F" target="_blank"></a><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&amp;source=WEF&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weforum.org%2Fagenda%2F2019%2F01%2Fpoverty-data-never-tells-the-whole-story%2F" target="_blank"></a></p>



<p class="has-background has-pale-cyan-blue-background-color">Written by</p>



<p>
                  <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/claytonchristensen">Clayton Christensen</a>, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
                </p>



<p>
                  <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/efosa-ojomo">Efosa Ojomo</a>, Senior Research Fellow, Global Prosperity, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation
                </p>



<p>
                  <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/karen-dillon">Karen  Dillon</a>, Senior Researcher, Global Prosperity, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation
                </p>



<p> <em>This article was originally published in the WEForum Agenda newsletter. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.</em></p>


Op-Ed: Why Africa should stop focusing on alleviating poverty but on creating prosperity

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<p>The United Nations expects Nigeria to become the third most populous country in the world by 2030. The country&#8217;s real estate sector would require innovative funding structures to accommodate the housing needs of the growing population. Tola Akinhanmi, Acting Head; Real Estate Finance, West Africa at Stanbic IBTC joins CNBC Africa to explore the financing structure for commercial real estate development in Nigeria.</p>


Understanding the financing needs for commercial real estate in Nigeria

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<p>According to a new global report released today by Sustainable Energy for All, the world is still falling behind in meeting the universal electrification agenda of 2030. $52 billion is the total amount missing to provide the world&#8217;s energy needs. Joining CNBC Africa for more is Rachel Kyte, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All.</p>


600 million Africans have no access to energy, here’s how govts can address this

<figure><img decoding="async" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241212/original/file-20181018-67188-12rs5mq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="File 20181018 67188 12rs5mq.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1" /><figcaption>The WHO recommends HIV viral load testing to monitor people on ARVs.<br />
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/glenda-gray-111201">By Glenda Gray</a>, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/south-african-medical-research-council-1976">South African Medical Research Council</a></em></p>
<p>A United Nations <a href="http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/909090">initiative</a> backed by global experts has set its sights on an ambitious programme to bring an end to the AIDS epidemic by 2030.</p>
<p>The 90-90-90 strategy aims to do this by reaching three targets: 90% of all people with HIV must know their status, 90% of those diagnosed with HIV must receive antiretroviral therapy, and 90% of people receiving antiretroviral therapy must be virally suppressed. When a person is <a href="http://www.who.int/hiv/mediacentre/news/viral-supression-hiv-transmission/en/">virally suppressed</a> it means the virus in their blood is undetectable. The last goal is informed by <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhiv/article/PIIS2352-3018(17)30183-2/fulltext#%20">evidence</a> that people with a suppressed viral load are less likely to transmit HIV to others.</p>
<p>But a couple of steps still need to be taken before these goals can be met. The first is large scale community based HIV testing that aims to get people tested on an annual basis at the very least. The second is linking testing to care. This is critical because it addresses the gap between a person being diagnosed with HIV to when they start antiretroviral therapy.</p>
<p>The third step is the close monitoring of people taking antiretroviral medication. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends <a href="http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/255702/9789241512633-eng.pdf?sequence=1">viral load testing</a> as the primary method of monitoring people on antiretroviral therapy. Viral load is the measure of the amount of HIV in a person’s blood and is used as a measure of how well a person is responding to HIV treatment. The lower the viral load the better the health outcomes.</p>
<p>WHO guidelines advise that all patients on antiretroviral therapy receive a viral load test at six months and 12 months, and annually thereafter if the patient is stable. But very few patients receive that level of care.</p>
<p>The main barrier is the time it takes to get test results back from laboratories that are often situated great distances from clinics. One way round the problem is to enable viral load testing to take place at primary health care level – what’s known as point-of-care viral load testing. This would be a game changer. Results would be known immediately and health workers could intervene swiftly by evaluating antiretroviral treatments in real time. This would, in turn, improve treatment outcomes.</p>
<p>But achieving this requires innovation. A new approach is being piloted. The idea is to test if point-of-care viral load monitoring is in reach.</p>
<h2>Testing</h2>
<p>Monitoring the viral loads of people on antiretroviral therapy is an essential part of HIV management. Viral load testing helps doctors determine if a person is taking their medication as prescribed. It also helps to determine if patients are on the correct combination of antiretroviral drugs.</p>
<p>It’s a key part of the arsenal against HIV because research shows that people who are virally suppressed are less likely to pass on the virus to someone else. That makes it a key factor in breaking the cycle of transmission.</p>
<p>The most efficient way of doing this is through point-of-care testing sites. These are based within the community so that patients don’t have to travel long distances to get tests done as well as to receive treatment. This new model is being piloted with the aim of providing convenient access to care for patients.</p>
<p>Currently nearly all viral load testing is conducted in centralised and <a href="http://www.nhls.ac.za/?page=hiv_pcr&amp;id=61">designated laboratories</a>. This means that there can be lags in getting results back to the field. Patients can wait for weeks.</p>
<p>Laboratory based viral load testing is also expensive. Point-of-care testing is also cheaper than lab-based viral loads: health care workers could do the test rather than highly paid technicians.</p>
<p>Small steps have been made in the direction of enabling viral load monitoring to be done at point of care.</p>
<p>But additional equipment is also needed. Pilots evaluating point-of-care viral load testing are ongoing. A pilot is being run using a portable testing machine – the m-PIMA HIV1/2 – that fits on a desk top and can provide an accurate reading of viral load in under 70 minutes.</p>
<p>The machine is being tested to establish whether it meets WHO standards. Once it is given the stamp of approval by the WHO, ministries of health can start the implementation at all sites.</p>
<h2>Closing the gap</h2>
<p>All countries still struggling to bring the HIV pandemic under control are focused on achieving the 90-90-90 goals.</p>
<p>South Africa, which still has the <a href="http://www.unaids.org/en/regionscountries/countries/southafrica">biggest HIV epidemic in the world</a>, with 7.9 million people living with <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/uploads/pageContent/9234/SABSSMV_Impact_Assessment_Summary_ZA_ADS_cleared_PDFA4.pdf">HIV</a>, is no exception, and is making significant progress.</p>
<p>It is edging closer to the target of having 90% of people with HIV <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/uploads/pageContent/9234/SABSSMV_Impact_Assessment_Summary_ZA_ADS_cleared_PDFA4.pdf">knowing their status</a>. And it’s made significant progress on the second target that 90% of people with HIV should be on treatment.</p>
<p>But it has some way to go on the third. While the country is on track to meet the goal that 90% of people on treatment be virally suppressed, it’s advances on this front haven’t been uniform. Some regions of the country still lag behind others. Being able to roll out point of care testing would go a long way in helping close these gaps.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104432/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/glenda-gray-111201">Glenda Gray</a>, Research Professor, Perinatal HIV Research Unit and President, <em><a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/south-african-medical-research-council-1976">South African Medical Research Council</a></em></p>
<p>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-innovation-can-help-end-the-aids-epidemic-by-2030-104432">original article</a>.</p>

Innovation can assist in the end of the AIDS epidemic by 2030, here’s how

<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><div id="attachment_320323" style="width: 540px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-320323" class=" wp-image-320323" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/HeForShe_b.jpg" alt="" width="530" height="353" /><p id="caption-attachment-320323" class="wp-caption-text">UN Women&#8217;s &#8216;HeForShe&#8217; initiative</p></div></p>
<p>Johannesburg – 9 October 2018 – Gender equality is a fundamental human right but remains a distant dream for many women worldwide. The United Nations’ HeforShe is a solidarity campaign for the advancement of gender equality. Its goal is to achieve equality by encouraging both genders to partake as agents of change and take action against negative stereotypes and behaviors, faced by people with feminine personalities/genders. Grounded in the idea that gender inequality is an issue that affects all people—socially, economically and politically—it seeks to actively involve men and boys in a movement that was originally conceived as &#8220;a struggle for women by women&#8221;.</p>
<p>The HeForShe movement is gathering momentum globally as a cohort of select leaders from both the public and private sectors join the drive and stand out as visionaries on gender equality. On behalf of Standard Bank Group, Chief Executive Sim Tshabalala, has become one of the global “Thematic Champions” in the HeForShe movement. These leaders have committed to implement game-changing policies and concrete actions towards gender parity.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-320322 size-medium alignleft" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/HeForShe_Sim-copy-2-copy-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" /></p>
<p>“Achieving gender equity is a moral duty, a business imperative, and just plain common sense. Women embody half the world’s talent, skill and energy &#8211; and more than half of its purchasing power. So every sensible business leader must be committed to achieving gender equity in their company and to contributing to gender equity in the societies in which we operate,” says Tshabalala.</p>
<p>In the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Gender Gap report, it is estimated that it will take more the 217 years to achieve workplace equality after gender parity took a step backwards in the past year.</p>
<p>Concrete commitments made by Standard Bank Group in order to bring about tangible change include reaching parity in executive positions and to improve the representation of women in executive positions from its current 32% to 40% by 2023. Another is to lift the representation of women on the Board from 22% to 33% by 2021.</p>
<p>Standard Bank is also committed to increasing the representation of women Chief Executives in its Africa Regions network from 10% to 20% by 2021, while Standard Bank South Africa will improve the representation of women in executive positions from the current 35% to 40% by 2021.</p>
<p>While progress has been made in certain countries in Africa to close gender gaps, others remain behind the curve. Namibia and South Africa both score in the Top 20 in the WEF global report on gender equality &#8211; after closing 78% to 76% of their gender gaps &#8211; but Sub-Saharan Africa still displays a wider range of gender gap outcomes than practically any other region.</p>
<p>Launched by Emma Watson and the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2014, HeForShe represented the first global effort to actively include men and boys as change agents for gender equality at a time when most gender programs were only targeting women.</p>
<p>It was the beginning of a trend that only seems more relevant as stories emerge of sexual abuse and harassment suffered by women in the workplace.</p>
<p>The Sustainable Development Goals call for gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, but campaigns such as last weekend’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women highlight that there is much work to be done. The U.N. recently reported that nearly 20 percent of women surveyed said they had experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner in the previous year.</p>
<p>Originally conceived as a one-year media campaign to raise awareness about the role of men and boys in gender equality, the HeForShe website garnered more than 100,000 male supporters in its first three days. These males affirmed their commitment to the cause by declaring themselves “HeForShe” and saying that gender equality is not just a women’s issue. Early adopters included a clutch of celebrities and politicians, including former U.S. President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and actor Matt Damon.</p>
<p>Since then, 1.6 million men have signed up online, including at least one man in every country of the world, and its “Impact Champions” include the presidents of Rwanda, Ghana, Malawi, and Indonesia, among several other heads of state. The issue has also been the subject of 2 billion conversations on social media.</p>
<p>But HeForShe is not without its critics. Many in the gender equality community say they would like to see the movement make more concrete demands of its male champions, and have called for civil society to play a greater role in developing and monitoring the movement.</p>
<p>“Now is a good moment for reflection and discussion about HeForShe, which has achieved high visibility, clear successes, and also drawbacks,” said Gary Barker, co-founder of Promundo, an NGO working to engage men and boys for gender equality, which has advised the HeForShe campaign since its launch three years ago.</p>
<p>“Having that amount of reach and star power on board means there’s huge potential, but we need to harness it before the movement loses momentum … [and] we need to push UN Women to go further and ask more of men,” he added.</p>
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<p><em>Content provided by Africa.com </em></p>


How UN Women’s global ‘HeforShe’ initiative seeks to drive gender equality

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