ECA United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

UN Entity Layer: 
Regional Commissions

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) was established by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations (UN) in 1958 as one of the UN's five regional commissions. ECA's mandate is to promote the economic and social development of its member States, foster intra-regional integration, and promote international cooperation for Africa's development.

Work on Gender Equality 

ECA have a programme called African Center for Gender and Development (ACGD). The overall objective of the ACGD is to inform and influence the content as well as the direction of economic and social development within Africa, with a view to making them more gender- responsive.

Major Activities

Taking into consideration the commitments of the African Ministers meeting to gender equality , equity and women's empowerment at the Seventh Regional Conference on Women( Beijing +10) held in October 2004, as well as similar commitments stated in regional and international policy frameworks and instruments (mainly the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs, NEPAD, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human an People's Rights on the Rights of Women, the Solemn Declaration of African Heads of State and Government on Gender Equality in Africa, etc), ACGD is further focusing its mission on the following activities:

  • Monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action on Women, ten years after 1995 world conference on women in Beijing;
  • Analysis of national sectoral policies and guidance on adequate strategies to be developed for mainstreaming gender in poverty reduction programmes so as to improve women's access to productive resources and recognize the economic value of their unpaid work;
  • Developing a conceptual framework to mainstream gender in budgetary policy and processes;
  • Enhancing the capacity of Member States and ECA in gender mainstreaming so as to better formulate, implement and evaluate their gender- inclusive development programmes;
  • Building the capacity of Member States to use the African Gender Development Index (AGDI) and other tools developed by ECA to monitor the status of women in comparison to men in different sectors;
  • Supporting national and sub-regional NGO's to advocate for the elimination of gender-based discrimination;
  • Developing adequate information strategy to facilitate a better exchange of experiences, promote partnership and strengthen networking;
  • Producing and publishing the up- to date data on the status of women in Africa, for example the African Women's Report, as a flagship publication

Source: ECA

Contact Information

For more information, please visit the official ECA website.