KAMPALA, Uganda – Liberia’s MacDella Cooper has urged every company dealing with infrastructure to put women on decision-making panels.
She made the call while delivering the keynote address at the Women in Infrastructure Conference in Kampala, Uganda this week.
“The fight to put women and youth in the right positions of leadership starts with a leader who appreciates the potential of women. I commend Uganda’s president for that. We still need to surpass the current 30 per cent women representation,” said Mme. Cooper.
Ambassador MacDella said there was no time for women to indulge in self-pity.
“Wake up; we have to develop the continent. Out of 1.3 billion Africans, 51% are female,” she said and urged women not to seek permission but fight to be leaders.”
She pledged continued working with Women in Infrastructure Development in Uganda. “My foundation will partner with different stakeholders to make sure our legacy goes on and on.
The high-level Women’s Conference celebrating women in infrastructure was held on the theme, ‘Bridging the Infrastructure Gap, the Role of Women’.
“The fight to put women and youth in the right positions of leadership starts with a leader who appreciates the potential of women. I commend Uganda’s president for that. We still need to surpass the current 30 per cent women representation”
macdella cooper
Referring to a meeting with the former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga of Uganda said she had asked the IMF boss at the time to build structures in the projects funded by the institution where women could fit in.
“When you look at the bid security of the IMF, no woman can afford it. Even here, when you ask a women to bring a bid security of shs400 million, how many of them can put away such an amount,” said Kadaga.
She added that the Ministry of Finance had been asked to create more spaces for women and youth to give them an enabling environment for investment, which she said had not yet been adequately realised.
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