Graca Machel: Africa must wake up faster to the role women can play

As the kick-off to the World Cup in South Africa approaches, people are seeing not just South Africa but our entire continent as equal partners in this extraordinary global celebration.

So, as the world's eyes turn to Africa, we should take the opportunity to showcase the key role that Africa's women are increasingly playing in the continent's success.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's election as president of Liberia, the first woman elected to run an African country, was symbolic of the progress of women across the continent. We are proud as well that women make up more than 50 per cent of MPs in Rwanda – the highest proportion in the world. South Africa and Lesotho are just two other African countries that sit near the top of the gender-equality league table.

It is women as well who are helping to calm tensions and heal Africa's terrible wounds of conflict and violence. Women are in the lead in conflict resolution, in reconciliation, and in drafting the legal and constitutional framework to secure peace and prevent abuses.

The gender gap in schooling remains a concern, however. Africa still lags behind many parts of the world in educating its girls from primary school through to university. But many more girls are attending and completing school now than a decade ago.

Education is the bedrock for progress, so the focus now must be on those countries that are failing to close the gap. Governments need to implement the right strategies and find the political will and resources to succeed. One of the major problems highlighted in the just-published Africa Progress Report, prepared by the African Progress Panel, is the gap between plans and change on the ground.

Another area where we have seen little progress is in harnessing women's full talents and potential in the formal economy. Look in our fields. It is women who you will see planting and harvesting the crops. Look in our markets. It is women who you will see buying and selling the goods on offer. Women, too, are setting up the small businesses that are creating jobs and spreading prosperity.

Women are truly the motors of Africa's economies. Yet at every turn, their contribution is downplayed and their ambitions obstructed.

But it is in women's treatment, deliberately and accidentally, by the financial sector that the most damage is done. Women receive, for example, only 10 per cent of the credit given to small farmers and less than 1 per cent of total loans to agriculture. Yet they are responsible for growing 80 per cent of the food on our continent. Inheritance rules dictating that land – and its proceeds – can be passed down only through the men of the family have put women at a terrible disadvantage.

Africa's potential not only to feed its own people but to export food around the world is increasingly and rightly acknowledged. But this ambition will be met only through policies that recognise the central role of women in agriculture and enable them to drive a green revolution on the continent.

Women's lack of assets, together with out-dated social norms, is also a major barrier blocking their access to the capital they need to set up and expand small businesses. Women-run start-ups are most likely to become established enterprises. Yet they command less than 10 per cent of the capital available for investment in new enterprises.

Financial institutions must remove barriers to fair and easy access to capital and financial services. For Africa to reach the growth rates needed to meet the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals, women must be brought fully into the formal economy and the financial sector.

This requires innovation in the financial services and products on offer. If governments and key stakeholders can lift the barriers that prevent women from playing their full role in our economy and societies, the future is bright – not just for women but our entire continent.

Graa Machel is a member of the Africa Progress Panel, president of the Foundation for Community Development, and founder of New Faces, New Voices. She is married to Nelson Mandela.