From recognition to redistribution: Women’s leadership and the future of Africa’s economy

They care for children, support the elderly, prepare food, maintain households, and provide the social infrastructure that makes all other economic activity possible.

The expectation that women should simply gain greater access to existing economic structures overlooks the fact that many of these structures were built on assumptions that ignore care work and reinforce unequal distributions of power and resources.

Yet much of this labour remains invisible in economic statistics, undervalued in public policy, and overlooked in mainstream narratives of development.