Maiden Edition of Gender Mainstreaming Awards For West Africa Held in Ghana

Business Engage, a non-profit organization has organized the first ever Gender Mainstreaming Awards (GMAs) ceremony to celebrate and reward persons actively accelerating equality in their place of work.

The event which was held at the Holiday Inn in Accra, highlighted the impact of gender mainstreaming in Africa. 

The country representative, Dr. Rejoice Wodomdedzi Foli, who is an astute Senior Project Manager at Absa Bank and CEO of G-Wealth Consult, welcomed and thanked everyone for making it to the event. 

In her opening remarks, she stated that GMAs initiatives enable us to identify organizations and leaders who actively work towards making Africa the gender hub from which we can export stories of success and impact. 

“We celebrate gender mainstreaming champions from East, West and Southern African organisations and individuals recognised by the judges as being at the forefront of advancing the business case for gender mainstreaming” she adds

Dr. Rejoice Wodomdedzi Foli further shared that, “Business Engage aims to do this by inspiring change via the multitude of stories we accumulate year on year”.

According to her, they are also doing this to encourage private sector players to buy into achieving more meaningful representation of women in the mainstream of business.  

“The awards are part of a much bigger initiative in gender mainstreaming being driven across Africa, one that encourages men to also be part of the movement,” she emphasized.

Again, she disclosed that this year, they had a 60% increase in the number of entries, incorporating some wonderful stories and the growth of companies and the sustainability of programmes during this period is evident by the companies who will be awarded champions, category winners and finalists.

Chief Executive Officer of Business Engage, Colleen Larsen, also present at the ceremony stated that their organization intends to celebrate gender mainstreaming champions across the African continent with the main aim of getting it entrenched as a working ethic within our labour force. 

Touching on Accenture in Africa, she underscored that, “They believe that issues of gender mainstreaming organizations must move beyond simply talking about it and create a workplace environment that genuinely supports the advancement of women and promotes equality”.

In wrapping up the event, Dr. Wodomdedzi Foli Rejoice added that the individual categories, especially the Positive Role Model Award, have proven to have been a huge success therefore, they added a category to reward the female leaders in their various sectors.

“I thank our sponsor, Accenture, Silver sponsor JSE, and Assupol, East Africa Breweries Ltd., Imperial, RMB and TigerBrands. They have played a big part in making this possible. I also profusely thank the judges because I believe that an awards ceremony cannot be possible without the judges giving off their time and wisdom”, she stated.

She adds, We appreciate EABL, the 2021 East Africa Gender Mainstreaming Champion; TigerBrands, the 2021 Southern Africa Gender Mainstreaming Champion; and EY, the 2021 Africa Gender Mainstreaming Champion and also sincerely thank Lexis Bills for agreeing to be our MC for the occasion. 

“Congratulations to you all for what you have achieved and thank you for being amazing ambassadors for the initiative during the 2022 year. We look forward to having you involved as we expand even further and to see what else you accomplish,” she ended.

BY DC KWAME KWAKYE

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