Challenges Identified

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, 34 million adolescent girls are out of school. While international commitments to girls’ education exist on paper, translating them into concrete legislative and budgetary action requires the actors who hold political and social power to understand and champion gender-transformative approaches. Parliamentarians, who control the budget and laws that shape education systems, and traditional and religious leaders, who shape the norms and expectations that determine whether girls stay in school, have too often been absent from this conversation. Without their active engagement, policy commitments risk remaining disconnected from the communities and institutions that determine girls’ daily realities. 

Our Approach

At the request of AUCIEFFA, Bantare facilitated a series of training sessions bringing together African parliamentarians and traditional and religious leaders, with the aim of strengthening their understanding and integration of gender-transformative approaches into legislative, educational, and community frameworks.

The sessions were structured around four interconnected areas:

• Gender-Responsive Budgeting: training of parliamentarians in the analysis and allocation of specific resources for girls' education.

• The commitment of traditional and religious leaders as Guardians of Norms, positioning them champions of girls' schooling.

• Peer learning through the example of Malawi, where the involvement of community leaders led to the cancellation of 40,000 child marriages and the reintegration of girls into school.

• Identifying political and social resistance to develop crisis communication strategies.

Throughout, discussions were grounded in evidence repositioning gender equality in education as a systemic and structural issue, and introducing analytical tools including gender analysis and gender budgeting to participants who hold direct influence over how education is resourced and governed.

Outcomes

The training demonstrated that gender-transformative change in education requires more than policy design as it requires the deliberate cultivation of champions within the institutions and communities that determine whether girls can access and remain in school. Parliamentarians and traditional and religious leaders should be central when advocating for girls’ rights.

The sessions strengthened participants’ capacities and produced concrete action plans integrating the Gender Transformative Approach, with an evaluation mechanism confirming measurable improvements in knowledge and understanding. The Malawi case study was particularly generative, offering a replicable model for what becomes possible when community influence is mobilised.