High hopes were raised at the Nairobi meeting to conclude the United Nations Decade for Women in 1985. At the official meetings, more than 2,000 delegates from governments around the world met to hammer out a consensus of more than three hundred resolutions in Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women. Perhaps more importantly, the unofficial meetings (Forum '85) attracted approximately 14,000 women from existing and new organizations that emerged over the Decade, as compared to 8,000 in Copenhagen (Forum '80) and 6,000 in Mexico City, 1975.

Women experience numerous contradictions as they undergo social change. Many have celebrated the autonomy of Nigerian women. Some “got drunk” with the notions of this autonomy. Change created a number of problems that supposed autonomy could not come to grips with. Just a few examples: First, women appeared to contribute more labor to the development process than men, burdening them with physical and time constraints. Second, modernization created new resources and along with them, new kinds of inequalities in access to resources. Specifically, women had much more limited access to resources than men. Consequently, women could not invest resources in the same ways as men.

Since the initial meeting of the U.S.-Soviet Symposium on Contemporary Problems of sub-Saharan Africa in 1982 considerable change has occurred in the relationship between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in regard to African issues, as well as in the relationship between the American and Soviet specialists on Africa. Apprehension was the quality that infused the initial meeting in November of 1982 of the first-ever formal exchange of views between Soviet and American Africanists. Both American and Soviet participants wondered whether the discussions would be substantive, scholarly, and constructive. Conversly, would their opposite numbers simply repeat official government positions, make debating points rather than engaging in discussion, and adopt an ideological and baiting posture? In other words, “would the Symposium simply turn into another forum for the exchange of “cold war rhetoric?

The 1985 Nairobi Conference to close the United Nations decade dedicated to women of the world caught Kenyan women (and men) by storm. Indeed, the majority of Kenyan women did not know, until the eve of this conference, that there had been an entire decade dedicated to them, and committed to the achievement of Equality, Development, and Peace. However, the Kenyan policy makers and the enlightened among Kenyan women, especially leaders of women's organizations, were not only fully aware of the decade's developments, but had in various ways participated and contributed to it. On its part, the Kenya government by the end of the decade, had adopted a Women in Development (WID) policy position and created and/or promoted national machineries to develop and coordinate programs for women.

Modification of the system of apartheid which started in the late 1970s initially in “pure economic” fields gradually led to the necessity of revising the very foundations of the political structure in the RSA. The reforms provided fresh impetus for the democratic movement in the country and, in the final analysis, it did not slow down, but, on the contrary, stepped up the decay of the system of apartheid. Demarcation of the interests of social groups of the white population and the government’s attempts to reform apartheid brought about the irreversible phenomena of crisis in the camp of supporters of the regime. Many white leaders are facing a dilemma: either bend further efforts to preserve the material well-being of their community at the price of the policy which has no future either socially or politically, or try to reach a peaceful settlement of the conflict at the price of their privileged position.

As remote and improbable a venue for a crisis in American foreign policy as Quemoy or the Gulf of Tonkin, Angola (1975) came to assume a Munich-like symbolism in the calculations of Americans who perceived a threat of Soviet expansionism into the third world during the latter years of the Brezhnev era. Smarting from a political/military shutout in Angola that came on the heels of a humiliating American exodus from Saigon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pointed to Angola as the “principal” cause of a deterioration in U.S.-Soviet relations. Subsequent policy confrontations over Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Cambodia reinforced this perception of Angola as the beginning of the end of detente.

The Women's Decade has had a substantial impact in Zambia. Before 1975 there was virtually no discussion about the economic and political situation of the nation's women. Since 1985, however, many of the issues raised during the Decade have been made specific to the Zambian situation by a small national women's movement. Professional women active in the movement have focused on changes in policy making and planning processes to improve women's economic situation, rather than on political mobilization and participation.

Five years ago, women in Africa moved to the center stage of the continent. The U.N. Decade for Women Conference held in Nairobi brought together women from all over the world to exchange ideas and discuss future strategies. African women turned out for the meeting in force. Women representing governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and grass-roots women's clubs converged on Nairobi to tell their story to other women in the common struggle for equality, justice and peace.

Public opinion of late has been riveted to Africa’s southwest. The prospects of a settlement are glimmering on the horizon. Although the prospects are not completely clear, we can begin to view concrete steps toward a peaceful settlement in the region.

Ironically, the present security and development crisis in Southern Africa presents an unusual opportunity for early progress toward stability and justice in the region via peaceful parallel action and co-operation between the USA and the USSR. By seizing the opportunity to co-operate in what is now a worst case emergency in Mozambique, the superpowers can lay the groundwork for a security system acceptable to their interests and to those of the Africans as well. Violence and hunger in Mozambique may be the worst in the world. Their basic linkage to the efforts of the present South African regime to de-stabilize the country is unquestionable.

The United Nations Women's Conference in Nairobi was the high point of official and unofficial attention to women in Africa in the entire International Decade for Women. The conference seemingly had a profound capacity to influence subsequent policies, programs, and organizational efforts to empower women. Yet the internationally derived economic crisis has had an even more profound effect on Tanzanian women's work and politics. Since independence, but particularly since the 1967 Arusha Declaration, Tanzania has made remarkable progress in extending access to education and health care facilities. As a result of crisis and structural adjustment policies, however, state budgetary investments have moved from social to productive sectors; budget redirection looms large in explanations of women's work and politics.

The significance of the UN Decade for Women, in Africa as a whole and in Senegal in particular, must be assessed not only in terms of what was gained and what was not, but also in terms of where we started and the odds we were up against. For women in Africa, the decade meant the droit a la parole — the right to speak out, and the right be heard -- whether this right was won or granted, exercised spontaneously or in organized ways, and even if it was controlled or censored. Discourse by women on women was opened. Women seized the right to speak for themselves about themselves, sometimes freely, and sometimes cautiously within imposed limits.

The situations in Angola and Mozambique are very much alike. How can one define them: civil war, foreign intervention, economic breakdown, or destabilization?

There is a grain of truth in each of these definitions. Still, none of them fully reflects the developments in these countries. What we find in Angola and Mozambique is a unique crisis which has hit weak, nationally disunited countries. (By contrast, Afghans are united by a religious culture, and Nicaraguans by national sentiments.)

At the NGO African Women's Task Force Meeting in Nairobi in April 1988, Sara Longwe suggested that the “main problem in Africa is to shift women's development above the welfare level in the face of resistance from male dominated government bureaucracies.” She also maintained that ”… women's welfare is not likely to be much improved until the affected women themselves achieve control in such areas as control over factors of production and distribution of income and benefits… This dimension is concerned with women's power to control their own lives and become independent and self-reliant — both individually and collectively — on equal terms with men. Equality in control is the ultimate objective of the process of empowerment.“

A week before the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington, a group of American and Soviet scholars met in Moscow to explore how a new spirit of cooperation could be applied in Africa. The challenge was to find ways of transforming the well-established pattern of hostile competition between the two countries in that area of the world into one of collaboration for the mutual benefit of both countries and Africa. The results of the Moscow workshop are highly promising.

Today the world is in crisis. The impact of this crisis on the countries and people of the Third World has been very severe. In this context, Africa is the most affected continent as this economic crisis is aggravated by natural disasters such as drought in many parts of the continent. However, the major problems faced by Africa are external domination and the misplaced priorities of existing development strategies resulting in internal mismanagement. We note the disproportionate bias of the national budget in favor of military expenditure at the expense of basic human needs and services. Past experience has shown that the total emancipation of women and their full participation in the governance of their societies depend largely on the socio-economic and political conditions in which they live.

A critical problem for Africa is that of food production and distribution, highlighted by declines in food production, widespread hunger, and famine. There are several interrelated sources of this problem, both domestic and external. Among them are ecological problems, engendered by climatic and natural conditions; land fertility depletion in many regions of sub-Saharan Africa; the extreme scarcity of financial resources, accentuated by the debt burden and falling terms of trade; a deficit of investment goods and research and development facilities needed for agricultural development; and weaknesses in rural infrastructure, both economic and social. Unbalanced interaction between the rural and urban economies as well as archaic socioeconomic structures play a major role in the problems of food distribution, with consequent effects on food production.