A democracy and governance expert, Ayisha Osori, has said the monetisation of politics in Africa is impeding the effective participation of women in political and electoral processes.
She observed that many women on the continent did not have the ability to raise the needed capital to fund their political activities.
She said, “Bankrollers of political parties and activists are mainly men and thus, make it difficult for women to overcome the monetary barriers.”
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Madam Osori, the Director of Open Society Foundations, a civil society organisation was speaking to journalists at the opening of a conference on Increasing Women’s Political Presence in West Africa at the University of Ghana on Tuesday,
The two-day conference was organised by the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa at the University of Ghana.
According to her, there is a need to remove all forms of barriers that discouraged women from actively participating in political activities.
“Generally, women are at the bottom of the economic pyramid… As long as politics is about money, then how can women who are politically disadvantaged suddenly become politicians where you need money to win in politics.”
Madam Osori encouraged women to join political parties and become delegates, not necessarily to take political positions but be involved in the democratic processes.
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Women, she said, should not feel tainted by politics and that their involvement in the political environment would present an opportunity for them to demonstrate a good example of their values and principles.
“We can make politics attractive to women by holding people accountable.”
“The more we hold people accountable for maybe abusing people’s trust of funds, then we find that it is a good place for people to come in,” Madam Osori said.
The Conference sought to offer insights into understanding political presence, power, and representation in different contexts and how political practice could be expressed in those contexts in different ways.