Every March, our social media feeds and websites fill with tributes to trailblazers -- women who broke barriers, led movements, and changed institutions. And they deserve every word.
This month and especially on International Women's Day, which fell om 8 March, we find ourselves thinking about a wider diversity of women.
Take the woman farmer in Mozambique's Cabo Delgado, where about 80 percent of the more than 700,000 people displaced by an insurgency are women and children. She survived the conflict, but lost her harvest, livelihood and her home.
Picture the adolescent girl in the Sahel region or the Central African Republic, where girls are twice as likely to be married before age 17 than peers in other countries, and one in four girls becomes a mother before reaching adulthood.
These women are not the exception. In Africa's fragile contexts, they are the majority.
One thing we have learned leading in the development sector: gender inequality is not just a symptom of fragility. It is a driver of it.
When women are excluded from economic life from safety, from decision-making, communities become weaker -- and more vulnerable to the forces that pull them apart. We know countries facing fragility lag behind other African countries in major indicators of gender equality such as economic empowerment and representation. In fact, 70 percent of these countries our Africa Gender Index 2023 Analytical Report tracked, scored below continental average, highlighting significant gaps in women's political voice and leadership.
Gender inequality is not just a symptom of fragility. It is a driver of it.
For women and girls, that toll is not abstract. It is the compounding loss of basic rights -- safety, livelihoods, legal identity, education and voice. Ensuring justice, rights and protection for women and girls in fragile and conflict-affected contexts requires stronger and more sustained action.
First, there must be greater investment in crisis prevention. Crisis response alone is not enough. The cycle does not begin with the violence. It begins with exclusion -- economic, political, institutional. And in fragile contexts, that exclusion is built into the structure of daily life.
In conflict-affected countries, less than 20 percent of women are in paid work, compared to about 69 percent of men. Financial dependence significantly increases exposure to violence, loss of land rights, and barriers to accessing justice. Economic independence, then, is not just a development outcome for women transition states. It is also a form of protection.
The Bank's 2022-2026 Strategy for Addressing Fragility and Building Resilience in Africa calls for prevention - investing in governance that protects rights for women and girls, economies that generate independence, and partnerships that can reach the hardest places. Here's three things we've learned:
Laws written to protect women must be enforced to have impact. For example, in South Sudan, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau, three of Africa's most fragile governance environments, the Bank partnered with the United Nations Development Programme to deliver the Building Resilience and Inclusive Development through Governance and Equality initiative.
This initiative strengthens justice institutions to respond to gender-based violence; it trained judicial and court personnel; enhanced women's political representation and taught civil society how to hold governments accountable.
We learned that responding quickly at the start of a crisis saves lives. Take Sudan, now home to the world's largest internal displacement crisis. Since April 2023, more than 11 million people have fled their homes.
Data from UN Women shows how sharply the conflict has affected women. Reports of gender-based violence have more than doubled since the war began. Many women flee with their children and little else. They arrive in areas where armed groups control the roads, clinics struggle to cope, and protection systems for women - like skills training and cash transfers to start a new life - have broken down.
Working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Bank launched the Crisis Response for Women and Affected Communities in Sudan to help women rebuild their lives. The program supports livelihoods, expands access to health care, and helps women take part in community leadership and peace efforts.
So far, the initiative has provided cash grants and farming tools to more than 95,000 women, enabling them to restart small businesses as well as grow and process food. It has also rehabilitated five hospitals that now provide essential maternal health services, as well as strengthened referral services for hundreds of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, and improved community access to clean water and sanitation.
Finally, we know effective institutional coordination is essential.
The Bank has set up a specialized facility in 2008, to provide additional concessional resources to countries facing situations of fragility and conflict. Out of 103 projects financed through the Transition Support Facility in the past three years, 83 percent have had a direct impact on gender equality and on women and girls.
The Bank has also published a Guide to Empower Women's Businesses in Transition Contexts, a practical tool for institutions helping women entrepreneurs jumpstart businesses, bounce back from crisis and seize sustainable opportunities.
Investing in women in fragile contexts is not a side agenda. It is the agenda.
In the month celebrating International Women's Day and its call for justice for women and girls, we call on the global community to support every woman and girl to exercise her rights, to access justice, and to contribute to collective progress.
Not just in March, but all year. That is how sustainable development and peace can be achieved.
About the authors
Dr. Jemimah Njuki is African Development Bank Group's Director for Gender, Women and Civil Society; Dr. Yero Baldeh is the Bank's Director of the Transition States Coordination Office
