Women Group to Build Hospitals, Training Centres Across 52 African Nations
- Sets up microfinance headquarters in Abuja
Senator Iroegbu in Abuja
The Women Advancement for Economic and Leadership Empowerment in Africa (WAELE/ARCELFA) has announced its plan to establish hospitals, vocational training centers, and water treatment plants across 52 African countries, including Nigeria.
This was contained in a communique issued Monday at the end of its two-day executive meeting/international training on Peace and Conflict Management and Mediation in Abuja under the chairmanship of the group’s Founder/President, Otunba Basirat Nahibi-Niasse, with board of trustee members, officials and Regional Representatives of WAELE/ARCELFA from the West, North, East, Central and Southern Africa.
The meeting was attended by 78 women participants from 28 countries who were briefed on the significant milestones so far recorded by the organisation, including but not limited to, presence in 52 countries so far, during which WAELE/ARCELFA’s global role as a champion of peace and women emancipation were recognised and appreciated.
In the communique, the group resolved to support widows, construct boreholes and water treatment plants, build women and specialist hospitals, and vocational training centres in all the 52 countries where WAELE/ARCELFA has presence, as well as in the six geo-political zones of Nigeria.
Nahibi-Niasse said a microfinance bank for the organisation would also commence operations at the Abuja headquarters, adding that as part of plans to give voice to the voiceles, a radio and television station for WAELE will soon commence operations from Namibia.
The communique read: “Participants unanimously approved the projects and pledged to do their best to facilitate speedy actualisation of the projects in all their countries.
“During the breakaway sessions, delegates from all the five regions of the continent discussed and compared notes on their priority projects and presented to the meeting their strategic action plans for the next three years (2018-2021).”
The meeting received presentations on the final day of the conference from erudite scholars and resource persons on training, nexus between peace, security and development, conflict management, early warning, peacekeeping, mediation, and negotiations, all of which were further reviewed during the closing brainstorming session that marked the end of the conference.
The session on the whole adopted a take-home document on the improvement of the lot of African women.
Earlier, Nahibi-Niasse who spoke to journalists noted that the organisation has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with an anonymous country for the funding of these projects.
Nahibi-Niasse said, “We are hoping that in the near future, some governments will join hands with us. We have signed an MoU with a first world country to fund these projects, a country which I won’t disclose yet.”
Nahibi-Niasse said the organisation has trained hundreds of widows across Nigerian states such as Benue, Enugu, and Cross Rivers among others, on financial empowerment.
Nahibi however, urged women across Nigeria to become members of the organisation, stressing that “in order for women to access these empowerment benefits, they must strive for membership in our organisation”.
Also speaking, Special Adviser, Bibliotheca Alexandria Egypt, Ms. Maha Ghanem, emphasised the need for the peace and mediation training to further the progress of African women.
“We need to come together to help each other and the women in the right way to build her family and her country. It is an important thing for women to join this NGO, to enable them obtain good jobs, and accomplish their goals to better the society,” she said.
The next meeting of the organisation is scheduled for Windhoek, Namibia, from November 1 to 3, 2018.
The Abuja event had representatives of the following countries in attendance: The Republics of Angola, Benin,Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Arab Republic of Egypt, Federative Republic of Ethiopia, and The Republic of Gabon.
Others are: The Republics of Gambia, Guinea, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Niger, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Kingdom of Eswatini (Swaziland), Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia.
