Great, strong women showing the way to Africa’s renaissance

BY DEBO ADESINA

I have spent the few weeks before now engaging with the leading lights of Togo, pushing, among others, our ideas of a Nigeria-Togo Business Council and a Nigeria-Togo Ideas Forum.

The level of enthusiasm and support have been marvellous. At our meeting, Her Excellency, Prime Minister Victoire Tomegah-Dogbe of the Republic of Togo, laid out a vision that is unambiguous in clarity and exuded an energy that is unmistakable in its readiness for the tasks ahead of our nations and peoples.

Speaker of the country’s national assembly, Her Excellency, The Right Honourable Yawa Djigbodi Tsegan, craves genuinely African solutions to Africa’s problems. The beauty of her mind, her Pan-African dreams, her diligence, illustrated by the works she has done, and her commitment to the African glory are enough lightening torch for the renaissance of the Black Race.

President of the Togolese Chamber of Commerce, Madame Nathalie Manzinewe Bitho, epitomises the African woman at her best: hardworking, beautiful and ever in great spirits for her people.

Professor Koumealo Anate is a former minister of communications of the Republic of Togo and a member of the national assembly. A very brilliant scholar and professor at the University of Lome, she is currently president of the Togolese Writers Association and has quietly started work as co-chair of the proposed Nigeria-Togo Ideas Forum.

The beautiful thing is that what is happening in Togo mirrors the happenings in Nigeria, two brotherly nations and partners over time, with the same values. In the cabinet at home, at the United Nations as deputy secretary-general, at the World Trade Organisation, WTO, as the director-general and all over the world as first-rate leaders, the women of Nigeria, Togo and, indeed, Africa, are holding a banner aloft, carrying one emblem: THE MOTHERS DO IT RIGHT.

Great women, strong women, the women of Africa.

I once wrote that humanity pollutes its joy, tames its own flight to glory and shackles its own progress by keeping the girl-child or women in any form of bondage, that the world would be made total in happiness if more women were placed in positions of power and authority.

The McKenzie Institute is on record as having come up with a finding that 26 percent of today’s global gross domestic product (GDP), roughly 25 trillion dollars, could be added to the world economy by 2025 if women played exactly the same role as men in leadership and in economic management around the world.

Not perfect yet. No. But, Up Nigeria. Up Togo. Up Rwanda. Up Africa.

Great women, beautiful souls, the women of Africa.

No doubt, the African continent is on the rise. On the strength of her daughters.

Adesina is the ambassador of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the Republic of Togo