Sub Saharan Africa

In Ghana, the leader of the opposition Progressive People's Party (PPP), Papa Kwesi Nduom, has named Eva Lokko as the party’s vice presidential candidate for the December 7 general election.

Miss Lokko is an engineer and communications expert, a former director general of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, an information and communication technology (ICT) consultant, and Chief Executive Officer of Totally Youth, a non-governmental organization. She outlined the party’s criteria before her selection.

A four-day capacity building workshop organized for aspiring female parliamentary candidates in the country opened at Akosombo on Wednesday.

The workshop brought together aspiring female parliamentary candidates of the National Democratic Congress, the New Patriotic Party, the Convention Peoples Party, the Progressive Peoples Party and the Peoples National Convention.

Advocacy groups for women and minorities in Somaliland have raised concerns about their political role in government after members of the lower house voted down a provision that would have established a quota for their representation in parliament.

"We decided to remove the provision providing a quota of local council and parliamentary seats to women and other minority groups from the agenda after lawmakers refused to debate on it," said first Deputy Speaker of Parliament Bashe Mohamed Farah after the vote.

Parliament and the Women's University in Africa yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which the institution will offer various educational programmes to parliamentarians and staff. The agreement was signed by WUA vice-chancellor Professor Hope Sadza, Speaker of the House of Assembly Mr Lovemore Moyo and President of the Senate, Ms Edna Madzongwe.

Mr Moyo welcomed the signing of the agreement.

Renowned media personality Wanjiru Chege has resigned to embark on her bid for the Women Representative seat for Murang'a County. The Coro FM presenter who was also the controller of commercial radio services in the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation officially tabled her resignation letter on Monday.

The DA will not accept amendments to the Electoral Act to provide for party gender quotas. This would be as constitutionally problematic as basing representation in Parliament on race or any other demographic variable.

The DA thoroughly rejects the concept of demographic representivity, which was the animating idea of apartheid. In contrast, our constitutional democracy enjoins us all to protect each other's rights. You don't need to look the same as someone to be represented by them in Parliament.

Water and Irrigation Minister Charity Ngilu launched her presidential bid on Sunday and pledged to focus on women and the youth empowerment if elected Kenya's fourth President in next year's General Elections.

Launching her bid on the Narc party at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, the Kitui Central MP said she was confident of succeeding President Kibaki in her second attempt for the country's top job.

Ngilu said that the youth and women have adversely been affected by the economic policies that do not favour them.