The struggle for access to sufficient water in Africa is both a human rights issue and a development challenge, impacting on health, agricultural and economic activity, the educational opportunity of women and children and social stability and well-being.

The African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) recognises the significant issues pertaining to water and gender in the continent, and has developed a gender and water strategy. This strategy has seven key themes.

• Formulating and implementing gender in water policy
• Mobilising strategic human and financial resources
• Implementing project interventions through economic empowerment and other gendered approaches
• Undertaking, sharing and implementing strategic research and operational knowledge
• Mainstreaming gender through human and institutional capacity development
• Mechanisms to promote cooperation and coordination for mainstreaming gender in the water sector
• Monitoring and evaluation systems to support gender equality in the water sector

The Water Research Commission of South Africa, in partnership with the Department of Water Affairs, AMCOW, SADC and the Women for Water Partnership are hosting a conference on gender and water to address how best these seven issues can be addressed, in a meaningful and practical way that will make a real difference to the lives of poor women and men in Africa. Says Barbara Schreiner who will be chairing the conference, “It is our challenge, as water practitioners and researchers, as development activists, as civil servants, and as people with a passion to see things change, to find a practical way of addressing the gender and water challenges across the continent.”

The Gender and Water conference aims to bring together a wide range of people from inside and outside the water sector to engage, debate and find solutions to these challenges, and through this to assist AMCOW, African countries and other developing nations to address the developmental challenges of gender, poverty and water.