As part of its ongoing commitment to capacity-building in the South, IPS joined forces with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to organise a three-day encounter between African journalists/editors and women politicians, on strengthening gender perspectives on election.

Click here to view a copy of the report on the session “Strengthening the voices, Perspectives and Visibility of African Women Politicians in Elections and Governance”

The encounter, which will involve 1 journalist/editor and 1 female politician from 7 African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Lesotho, Benin, Cameroon, Sierra Leone), is aimed at:
1. pilot-testing various sections of the IPS training toolkit for journalists and women politicians;
2. providing African women politicians with pointers and guidelines on how to engage with the media and to make issues news,
3. making African journalists/editors aware of the gender dimensions of elections and governance issues in Africa and providing them with pointers and guidelines on how to avoid gender biases and stereotypes in their reporting on women in elections and gender and governance issues in Africa.

The encounter is part of a broader IPS/UNIFEM project, Strengthening the Voice and Visibility of Women in Elections in Africa. The project, financed though the new UN Democracy Fund, is aimed at creating links between journalists, female candidates and women’s organisations in order to ensure that the gender dimensions of elections in Africa is effectively communicated. Journalists are being mentored and commissioned to do independent reporting with a strong gender lens during electoral processes in Africa in 2007 and 2008. See the results so far at Africa: from Polls to Polls.