What we do

UN Women’s work in Africa mainly aims at providing high-quality technical and policy advisory services, generating knowledge, developing tools and capacity development initiatives to support country-level programming. This includes developing strategic partnerships at the regional level that can be leveraged by country offices.

Gender Data and Statistics
UN Women is implementing the programme “Making Every Woman and Girl Count: Supporting the Monitoring and Implementation of the SDGs through Better Production and use of Gender Statistics” to support countries in implementing the 2030 Global Agenda.
Leadership and political participation
UN Women supports regional gender-responsive measures to promote women’s leadership and participation in politics, government, business and society, and to influence regional and national legal frameworks and policies to increase women’s leadership and political participation.
Women’s economic empowerment
Through regional and national interventions, UN Women aims to empower women to increase income, build assets, wealth and business leadership, by facilitating women’s access to productive resources and business services, and by addressing policy and regulatory barriers, to promote women’s active participation in the economy.
Intergovernmental support
In intergovernmental forums at the United Nations, Member States come together to debate and seek agreement on global gender equality norms and standards.
Ending violence against women
UN Women support the development, implementation and adoption of regional and national policies and strategies in line with international standards to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls.
UN system coordination
When different parts of the multilateral system act together, they can deliver greater results—and maximize the use of scarce resources. Within the UN system, UN Women is mandated to lead, promote and coordinate efforts to advance the full realization of women’s rights and opportunities.
Peace and security
UN Women facilitates linkages and influences between women’s lived experiences and efforts with regional intergovernmental policy and programme processes, and leverages spaces for women leaders to directly engage regional institutions, participate in mediation and other conflict resolution and peace initiatives.
Governance and national planning
In Africa, UN Women focuses on providing technical and policy advisory services, developing capacity of regional institutions and Governments in gender-responsive governance and development planning and implementation, including budgeting processes.
Policy and advisory support
UN Women supports regional institutions, governments and other stakeholders in setting up and applying comprehensive and dynamic set of global norms, policies and standards on gender equality and empowerment of women.
Youth Engagement
Youth as a demographic category is defined differently in existing normative frameworks depending on the social, economic and political environment. Many researchers, reports and policy statements recognize that the definition of youth based on age can be challenging and has contributed to systematic and coherent analysis of youth indicators. Further it acknowledged that there is not one problem that affects all youth in the same way across states and regions; there is also no single solution that will broadly work for all youth.
Refugees empowered by UN Women in Rwanda
Humanitarian Action
Women and girls are not helpless victims. Humanitarian efforts must recognize the fact that women and girls—like men and boys—have much to contribute in preparing for, and responding to, crises. Women must be included in decision-making about the forms of assistance and protection they need. Humanitarian action can also present opportunities for new and more progressive gender roles and relationships to emerge.
Programme implementation
UN Women implements programmes (and their component projects) at country, multi-country, and regional levels through implementing partners, which include government entities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UN agencies, non-UN intergovernmental organizations, and UN Women (direct implementation). UN Women issues calls for proposals and calls for expressions of interest to identify and select, through a competitive process, suitable implementing partners.