Blog: Africa

Each year hundreds of thousands of women die from pregnancy-related causes. ICRW is investigating the financial and social costs of such deaths in rural Kenya.

Women farmers in Ghana tell ICRW's Payal Patel how a simple agricultural technology is helping them save time and expand their crops. Read the second installation in our Rural Impressions blog series.

Although the conflict in the Republic of Congo officially ended almost a decade ago, the tough business of mending broken lives is still underway. As is true in many wars, women's lives were deeply affected.

Our van climbed higher and higher as we navigated the rolling foothills of Mt. Elgon on the Uganda-Kenya border. Lush greenery surrounded us and plump cows dotted the fields. Although sparse electricity lines hung from some of the houses, there was no light as we approached Kapchorwa district. No light, except in the homes that owned a Solar Sister solar lantern.

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After so many visits here, I should no longer by surprised by how young the girls are, but I always am. The girls –  and so many of them really are just girls –  met with me to share their experiences with our project, which aims to improve the social, economic and health status of more than 5,000 recently-married girls in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. 

On my last trip to Rwanda, I assisted the Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre, a local nongovernmental organization, in implementing the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) among men and women ages 18 to 59. I helped the organization adapt the original survey to reflect a Rwandan context and trained about 80 data collectors.

On a recent visit to Rwanda, my ICRW colleague Amy Gregowski and I had the opportunity to meet members of the Rwanda Women’s Network (RWN) and learn about their effort to support survivors of the 1994 genocide.