ZIMBABWE: Women Seeking Justice Face Archaic Rules and Discrimination

The four armed robbers who gang raped her may be serving time for their crimes, but six years later justice has turned out to be a myth for Mildred Mapingure.

AFRICA-DEVELOPMENT: Governments Need to Reach Out to Rural Women

Governments, especially in Africa, need to have strong accountability measures in place in order to effectively reach women in rural areas through gender responsive budgeting.

SOMALIA: “I Carried Him a Whole Day While He Was Dead, Thinking He Was Alive”

As the first of food aid from the United Nations World Food Programme was airlifted into Mogadishu on Wednesday, it came too late for Qadija Ali's two- year-old son Farah.

ZIMBABWE: Bleak Future for Second-Hand Clothes Traders

It is becoming increasingly difficult for second-hand clothes traders like Susanne Jabavu to do business because of rising costs to import bales of clothing from neighbouring countries.

RWANDA: Women Parliamentarians Outnumber Men, But Gender Budgeting Still Needed

Rwanda is the first country in the world where women outnumber men in parliament, with women occupying 45 out of 80 seats. However, despite this, experts say that the country still needs a gender equality perspective on how national resources and programmes are implemented.

KENYA: Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting at Work

For the first time ever, the Kenyan finance minister has allocated almost four million dollars, about 3.6 percent of the primary education budget, to provide free sanitary pads to schoolgirls.

Q&A: Challenge Men To Share Political and Economic Power

Bineta Diop, director of the non-governmental organisation Femmes Africa Solidarité, is at the forefront of the fight for better protection of women in conflict zones and their integration in peace processes.

AFRICA: The Struggle for Women to Own Land

Even at the best of times, obtaining a title deed from the ministry of lands is a difficult process. But as the minister of lands admitted on Jul. 13 that his office is rife with corruption, the disorganisation of this office means Kenyan women are no closer to owning land.

ANGOLA: Law on Domestic Violence a Step Forward for Women’s Rights

Domestically abused women who are financially dependent on their abusers can now report the crime with the assurance that they will be able to get financial and medical support from the state, thanks to the country’s new law on domestic violence.

SOUTH SUDAN: Born into Crisis – Violence Against Women Continues

Violence against women is rampant, devastating and tolerated in South Sudan and the new country needs to address these gross human rights violations and train people, especially soldiers, to respect women’s rights.

UGANDA: Maternal Deaths Against Constitutional Rights

When Valente Inziku’s wife, Jennifer Anguko, went into labour they had decided she would go to the local referral hospital just to ensure a safe delivery.

Women Keen to Ease Greenhouse Effect on Their Ability to Provide

A successful entrepreneurial programme in the north of Namibia that infuses farming practices with gender-responsive environmentalism may serve as a model for other countries on the African continent.

KENYA: Empowering Women through Micro-Finance Credit

Without a college education and against the backdrop of limited job opportunities, it was not easy for Salome Wairimu to find employment.

KENYA: Uneducated Women Struggle to Access Credit Fund

As an estimated 3.7 million dollars continues to sit idle in the Women Enterprise Fund (WEF) kitty, the very women the fund was meant to benefit have complained about the difficult requirements that need to be met in order to access the money.

Q&A: “When They Find Out You’re a Lesbian They Refuse to Help”

With homophobia on the rise, large numbers of South African lesbians are being subjected to discrimination and violent assaults. There has also been an increase in "corrective rape" by men trying to "cure" them of their sexual orientation. More than 30 lesbians have been killed since 2006. But most of these crimes go unrecognised by the state and unpunished by the legal system.

RIGHTS-UGANDA: Government Needs to Prioritise Maternal Health

Just a week after a group of civil society organisations petitioned Uganda’s constitutional court demanding that the government’s non-provision of essential services for pregnant mothers was a violation of the right to life; Margaret Nabirye lost her baby in childbirth.

SWAZILAND: Girls Leave School Because of No Sanitary Wear

After a newspaper that Prudence* (16) used as sanitary wear fell from her while she played with friends at school, she left and never returned.

ZIMBABWE: Beating the Housing Blues

Every month Cynthia Dube and the nine other women from her co-operative make sure they sell enough clothes and appliances to put 100 dollars each in a joint savings. When they have enough money, they will buy each member a plot of land. And eventually they will help each other build their own homes.

ZIMBABWE: Rural Women Voting With Their Feet

At independence in 1980, Loyce Tshuma (55), a villager in rural Tsholotsho in Matebeleland North, was a loyal believer in politics as a powerful vehicle to change and better lives. Since then she never missed an opportunity to cast her vote.

SOUTH AFRICA
: Women Candidates Struggle in Local Government Elections

Political parties should be forced, through changes in legislation, to bring more women into government.

POLITICS: First Woman Speaker of Parliament Changing Politics

Very soon wives in Uganda will legally have the right to a share in their husband’s property, that’s if the country’s new speaker of parliament has her way.