West African Business Leaders Stepping It Up for Gender Equality
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On 26 September 2015, UN Women, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Alibaba Group of China co-chaired a high-level Breakfast Forum for top global leaders in business and philanthropy. The Forum was held at UN Women’s headquarters in New York in the margins of the Seventieth Session of the United Nations General Assembly during which Member States adopted a new global development agenda.
Achieving gender equality is fundamental to realizing the transformative promise of the historic 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals. However, deep financing gaps hinder progress for women and girls. To face this important challenge, UN Women called upon game-changing leaders to join the movement in unleashing the gender dividend. The Forum provided business and philanthropic leaders a unique platform to actively collaborate and support the work of UN Women and its vision of Planet 50-50 by 2030.
wealthiest woman of African descent1, Mamadou Coulibaly, the Malian media mogul and Diadie Sankare, one of Mali’s most successful and promising entrepreneurs, joined their voices to finance gender based initiatives and help mend the inequality gap. Ms Alakija signed the commitment board and held a private meeting with UN Women’s Executive Director where she made her commitment to actively participate in the area of girls' education and IT.
Other African Business and philanthropy leaders attending the event included James Mwangi, the CEO of the Kenya-based Equity Bank, SK Macharia, founder of Royal Media Services in Kenya, and Daphne Mashile-Nkosi, Chairperson of Kalagadi Management (South Africa). Representatives of international corporations such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, Cisco, Infosys, Sun Media Group, Mastercard, H&M, Citibank, the Ford Foundation and General Electric Foundation were also present.
Following the Forum, global Business Leaders were invited to join the Friends of UN Women’s Group, a private group that will support UN Women in achieving SDG #5: Gender Equality for all women and girls.