EXTENDING PARTNERSHIPS

The BWA continues to make contribution to the dialogue and initiatives relating to development of women. Working with the CEO we are extending our partnership with other organizations.

BMF has invited us to some of their regional events and it was good to share ideas on how we could support one another in enhancing the development of businesswomen and women managers. We also want to work closely with Women In Dialogue, as we share alot of synergies and our initiatives are complementary. I was invited to participate at their recent event in Limpopo and there was a huge attendance and again the same issues relating to the need for support to entrepreneurs was raised. The Provincial Government is highly involved and committed to promoting development. It will benefit the people in our regions if we find meaningful ways of collaborating to extend access to knowledge and resources.

OWIT, which is a women?s organization promoting understanding of international trading and actively involved in contributing to policy development to extend opportunities. I gave a keynote address at their launch two weeks ago, and indicated that we would invite them at BWA to present what they do and extend the participation of BWA members to their training sessions. Present at the event was the IFC, which is an international Finance Corporation, linked to the World Bank. They are keen to address BWA on the work that they are doing in financing and developing enterprises. We could arrange the first meeting with the Johannesburg and Pretoria branches, and follow up with other branches that are ready for the event.

INTERNATIONAL EVENTS

Over the past few months I attended International Women Leadership Conferences in Dubai and in Turkey. It was evident from the two events that governments and business leaders are taking the promotion of women leadership seriously.

In Dubai a critical focus was on entrepreneurship and the development of businesswomen. In Turkey, the framework was broader, and they highlighted the role of women in society indicating the participation of women in key sectors of their economy, the high levels of representivity of women in key technical areas as well as the welfare of women in the society in general. They also have a target to achieve 100% literacy and showed how the life expectancy of women and infant mortality has been improving over the years.

It is inspiring to note the concerted effort made by the countries to promote development of women.

CENSUS 2005

We are grateful to the support we received from Nedbank on the Census. They not only provided the funding, but they gave us research support though the involvement of Sandra Loube.

I particularly want to thank the CEO, Tina Thomson, for the hard work she put in the Census, her management and attention to detail ensured that we have a quality report. Over the past few months she had no break as she even had to work over weekends. She deserves a holiday.

President
Dr. Namane Magau