World Economic Forum: Progress Across Africa Depends on Girls

I mentioned last week that girls would be front and center at the World Economic Forum on Africa's session entitled "The Girl Effect in Africa." By all accounts, it was an amazing session. The Nike Foundation's Managing Director, Lisa MacCallum, served as moderator and shared this report:

For those not familiar with the World Economic Forum on Africa, this is one of the Forum's five regional annual meetings. As much as Davos is about theory, the regional meetings are about practice.

Following on the success of the Girl Effect on Development earlier this year, the Forum wanted to use the Africa meeting to shine a spotlight on what's working in the region and to discuss what needs to be done. And let's face it, a lot needs to be done. More than 75% of HIV positive youth in Africa are girls. Millions are out of school, facing early marriage, early childbirth and virtually no access to economic opportunity. In a nutshell, it's socially tragic and economically unsustainable. That's what we came to Cape Town to talk about.

But Thursday's session was the good news. It means action is being taken and very influential people are talking about it on the world stage. Before I get into the details, I do have to share one amazing thing that happened. Two minutes before we started, I found out that Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum, wanted to introduce the session.

How big a deal is this? Well, of all the sessions in Cape Town, this was the only one he introduced.

He spoke of the importance of public private partnerships in realizing the girl effect, as well as the Forum's commitment to it. He closed by saying the Girl Effect in Africa is one of the most important sessions on this year's program. In other words, if you consider it in the context of the economic crisis, the girl effect is a hugely important thing to be talking about.

Beyond the unexpected opening, one of the most exciting things about today's session was the participation of an 18-year-old girl from Zimbabwe named Zillah Muponda. Zillah joined the session as a panelist, giving a face to the girl effect and speaking passionately about her personal experiences as a girl in Africa today. As a young activist, Zillah is working to change the state of girls' lives. She has started an organization to get girls in school and to improve the quality of their education in rural communities. She raises funds for school fees to get both girls and boys into school. Zillah went on to say there's no point in providing access to education if nothing is taught -- teachers were not showing up to teach. So she also provides teachers with food and cooking oil provided by corporate sponsors to make sure they show up. Not bad for a girl who's still in high school herself.

Overall, there were a few key themes panelists addressed:

1. Investing in Girls as Smarter Economics

The girl effect provides exponential returns. It's grounded in all of the research that tells us when resources are put in the hands of a girl, she will produce more with it and invest more of it into the health and education of her family and community.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Managing Director of the World Bank said, "If it's smart to invest in women, then it's smarter to catch adolescent girls upstream and invest in their skills and their education because the returns are even higher. For every extra year of secondary schooling for girls, their wages increase by 10 to 20 percent, significantly higher than the same years of schooling for boys."

Colin Coleman, the CEO of Goldman Sachs South Africa commented on some research his company had carried out regarding the impact of girls' education on income. He said, "The direct and indirect effects of gender inequality in education may have reduced potential annualized per capita income growth by .5 to .9 percent in much of Sub-Saharan Africa."

Fortunately, he summed up nicely for those of us who don't run investment banks: "In Africa this means that actual income growth was only half of its potential."

It comes down to massive potential lost for an entire continent because girls haven't had the chance to participate.

2. Economic Solutions Are Often Masked by Culture

Culture was a theme that emerged again and again. Zillah reflected on her own experience and said, "The problem in rural areas is that there's an issue that people cling to culture a lot, so you find that girls have no place within families and their voice is never heard."

Richard Harvey, Chair and Former Chief Executive Officer of Aviva (the UK-based insurance company) referred to "a bit of research from McKinsey years ago and it said that the single factor that makes the most difference in turning around a business is the change in the culture. If we're going to turn around this business, which is developing Africa, then the culture which is keeping the girls out of the system is going to have to change."

Cultural and social norms can be deeply embedded, but many times it comes right back down to economics at the household level. For a family in poverty, it's assumed that girls have less economic potential than boys. When you're desperately poor, this assumption can be a powerful driver of decision making. It means that a girl might seem more valuable as a child bride and mother than an educated citizen.

3. It's Urgent - We Can't Wait. We Must Reach Girls Before They Are 12

Puberty changes everything for girls in developing countries. That's when her education, and consequently her health and safety, no longer have value. If we can't reach her by 12, we're no longer investing in prevention, we're investing in treatment.

Graça Machel, Founder and President of the Foundation for Community Development put it this way: "In our families, when a boy and a girl are born, there's a sort of hierarchy in terms of value. A boy we value more and a girl we value less. From the beginning, investments are made in a boy because he is more valuable. It happens in families, it happens in our government."

At the Nike Foundation we talk a fair amount about how families make difficult decisions that result in undervaluing their girls based on perceived necessity, so I was particularly interested when Richard argued that girls were actually overvalued.

When speaking of pulling a young girl of 10 out of school, he said, "[Families] possibly overvalued the contribution the girl could make in a short-term and the needs for that girl to stay at home to look after the other siblings and take care of the cattle... that's a short-term mistake but a heck of an easy one to make, if you're facing that kind of poverty."

It all comes down to one big idea: access to economic opportunity. Colin is very involved in 10,000 Women, a management and professional development program for women in developing countries. I asked him what that meant for girls. He said, "If you are honest about this, if you're going to educate girls and not provide them with a window to their own business and professional development, you're sending a signal that is precisely opposite of the signal you want to send and it's a blockage. This is about creating open access for girls to visualize their professional advancement."

4. Girls Won't Count Until We Count Them... Specifically

It gets back to D'Israeli's maxim -- "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." What I heard is that the numbers don't tell the story. Just because an indicator might be improving for a country overall, it could actually be getting worse in communities or whole regions.

Ngozi weighed in with a call for accountability from the top, and also noted that there's an opportunity to use the data and indicators to make countries compete. She said that setting indicators showing what countries are doing, and not doing, for girls and women can be extremely powerful.

Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank, had this to say, "On the issue of statistics, the picture is not good. The numbers are big numbers, aggregate numbers. They don't tell us the magnitude of what's happening to girls."

I was thrilled when both Ngozi and Donald referenced new work their organizations are developing to disaggregate data and better count girls.

5. A Little Bit of Support Is Not Enough

Complacency is an issue. It's easy, the panelists noted, to be satisfied with a small program or two or to consider increases of girls in primary school a success when they are not continuing on to secondary school.

According to Graça Machel, "The question is why girls are under-resourced. You don't invest so much, but you get happy that you are doing. You don't challenge yourself to say 'I have to have 100% of girls in school, I have to have 100% of girls succeed. When we do a little bit, it's like we say 'it's done.' We have to challenge that mentality."

When she made this statement you could actually feel a shift in the room. There was an aha moment where you could see the panelists and audience alike really starting to think through whether they are doing enough. It wasn't long before Donald said "We're doing quite a lot, but not enough for girls."

Richard also closed by reminding us of something everyone can do: advocate for girls. "How do you get the message out there? I would say every damn way you can... Just think about how the hell you get the message out there and then get on and make it happen."

It was an exciting and provocative discussion. Given the topic, it was fitting that Zillah got the chance to close the conversation. She was in quite esteemed company, but I doubt anyone could have challenged these leaders in the same way she did:

"I'm going to chase after every single person [in this room] that said they would pursue my objective. I promise I will do that because I'm really keen to see the change. Remember that I'm just one girl in Zimbabwe who's making this change. If you invested in even five girls in your countries, or even in my country, just imagine for yourselves the change you could make."

Before we wrapped, we had the chance to open up to Q&A. It was a bit unique in that there was a severe shortage of questions. This doesn't mean people didn't raise their hands. Plenty did, but the interest -- passion actually -- had more to do with commenting about the session, sharing how they are investing in the girl effect or serving up their own call to action.

To redirect that energy back toward the panel, I'd ever so politely say, "And now if we could hear from someone who has a question" and, again, the next person would comment but not query. I was relieved when a gentleman announced right up front that he had a question. He then spoke about his personal observations of the girl effect and asked the panel "what do you think about what I just said?"

I realized afterward that this was a reflection of people clamoring for a platform to talk about girls. It was encouraging to see that as a result of the panel discussion, we had:

1. A corporate board member calling on boards to be accountable for investments in girls,

2. an executive demanding that existing corporate resources be reallocated,

3. a family foundation leader stating that each and every individual has a responsibility,

4. the head of an NGO telling a story to demonstrate that change really can happen.

Keep in mind that the Girl Effect in Africa wasn't just the only session in the program about girls. In looking through the program, it was actually the only session that even mentioned girls.

That having been said, there was a young man in the audience who didn't get a chance to ask his question. Mohammed Barry, one of the British Council's Global Changemakers, was kind enough to share this after the session:

"There's outrage over rape in South Africa and most of these girls who are raped either end up HIV-positive or having children out of wedlock. 2010 is coming next year and I didn't see any strategies for preventing this in the country. What are the government and others doing?"

So with that, I'll turn it over to the readers. What are we going to do about this? He raises an excellent point. As South Africa plans for World Cup 2010 and the influx of fans that will come with that -- will the girls of South Africa be safe and free to celebrate with everyone else? What can we do about this?

Mohammed and I are looking forward to your comments. And in case you're wondering, yes, I thanked him for asking an actual question.