Washington, DC — African women rose from engaging discussions Tuesday with a call for women to rise up against non-performing women leaders in political positions who do not support their cause.

While calling for the removal of women leaders, who lack focus to create opportunities for those who would advance women's interest, they said African women could make a change in their communities, if the few in decision-making bodies have the interest of women at heart.

Speaking on the theme, "African Women's Leadership: Our Role in Advancing Family Planning," at the on-going Women Deliver Conference in Washington, DC, the speakers said although a lot of things were against women, they could make impact with the creation of conducive environment and political will by governments.

However, Ms Iyabo Bello-Obasanjo, Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, described the call as uncalled for and improper, saying the proposal was not workable since most of the women in parliaments or political offices were not put there by women.

She said: "The fact is that most women leaders were not put there by women movement, how then you can remove them. You didn't put them there in the first place so on what basis would they remove them? The idea of removing them is not ideal."

She agreed with the speakers that it was necessary to have many women in political positions, but advised women's movements to be always supportive of women leaders so that they in turn can support the movement, saying women in political positions work in consensus with men in capacity building and would not be ideal to advance only women cause.

Their discussion centered on what it would take to involve community leaders to help advance Family Planning and other women empowerment issues across Africa, particularly in the countries that have the highest unmet need.

In her presentation, Mrs. Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, the Executive Director and co-founder, African Women's Development Fund, said it would be necessary for African women to have a voice as well as power and control in issues that concern them.

She said: "Having a voice is important and is also connected to the issue of power; as we are talking about family planning, we are also talking about fertility planning and African women lack the power to negotiate with their male-counterparts."

Adeleye-Fayemi said one of the biggest challenges or tasks was the issue of accountability and misplacement of priority, saying it would be necessary for women leaders to ask themselves how women can sustain the issues they have in their communities.

She said one of the strategies by her organisation was to harness the potential of women leaders, women in politics, in media, in business, among others, as a platform to advance the cause of family planning and other women issues.

She said to make any meaningful progress, the number of women in parliament would help push women issues even as she said the few in parliament must have interest in women's issues or be prepared to be removed.

In her presentation, a Member of Parliament in Uganda, Ms Sylvia Ssinabulya, said female Parliamentarians in her country had made invaluable contributions to the achievements in health which the government has recorded so far by forcing it to make maternal health a priority.

She said: "Uganda has been able to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on HIV/AIDS as far back as 2006. Uganda was one of the countries with the highest number of maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS rates, but all that has changed because of the involvement of all stakeholders in pushing the issues.

"Although we are operating in a hostile environment where maternal health issues were downplayed, we were able to break the circle and make some progress," and advised other African countries to follow-suit for greater impact."

On maternal health issues, the Family Planning Programme Manager, Zanzibar Ministry of Health, in Tanzania, Dr. Hanuni Sogora, identified social cultural barriers, limited spousal communication; low empowerment of women, rumours and misconceptions as factors militating against the acceptance of family planning in African countries.

Sogora said a lot could be achieved if stakeholders could advocate for increased budget allocation to health and engage in training and re-training of service providers on new contraceptive technologies.