According to her, steps that sought to address investment in education, access to healthcare and the promotion of women’s leadership and political ambitions while eliminating gender-based violence must be prioritised.

The Minister made this assertion at the opening of an ECOWAS validation workshop on gender equality.

It was on the theme; ‘Gender Equality and the empowerment of women and girls: an imperative for the achievement of sustainable development and effective region­al integration in West Africa.’

The Minister encouraged stakeholders to solicit concerted efforts from each member state to achieve its gender equality goal in the sub-region, “saying the effort to achieve gender equality would not succeed in isolation within the sub-region so it is necessary to solicit concerted efforts from stakeholders, champions and col­laborators from all walks of life, through the sharing of ideas and best practices.”

According to Mrs Abudu, Ghana’s interest in gender equality and women empowerment were evident in both national and inter­national commitments made over the years, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) among others.

In a speech read on her behalf, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, said Goal five of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to achieve equality and empower all women and girls and therefore gender equality was not only a fundamental human right but a necessary founda­tion for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable development of Africa.

She mentioned that though ECOWAS member States had their signatories to several inter­national and regional gender legal instruments and had developed policies on gender empowerment, there were still challenges with im­plementation and domestication of these agreed protocols.

According to Mrs Botchwey, available information showed there had been progress in closing the gender gap through the en­hancement of women‘s participa­tion in national development, over the last decade.

She however, indicated that to achieve a wider gender gap clos­ing, policy makers had to do more by empowering women to partic­ipate and contribute effectively to national development