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Promoting Women's Political Leadership in West Africa:
The Internet and Skills for Democracy

Download full 2001 proposal as Word Document

Dowload 1999 Proposal as Word Document

Michigan State University (MSU) requests funding to promote the participation of West African women in political leadership through training in leadership skills and use of the Internet to obtain and develop resources on women, civic education, and democratization. Focusing on the theme of Women and Political Leadership, this program will build on the success of the program we currently are implementing with support from the Citizen Exchanges Program, "The Internet and Women's Democratic Organizing: Promoting Civil Society and Democratic Networking in West Africa." The program will engage elected officials, candidates, and leaders of non-governmental organizations and political associations that promote women's political involvement. Participants will be drawn from Nigeria, Ghana, Mali and Senegal.

We propose bringing a select group of politically active women from West Africa to MSU in May 2002 for a three-week training session A planning trip to West Africa will take place in November 2001. The training program will combine intensive workshops on the Internet – focusing on both using and developing resources on women and political leadership skills – with seminars and lectures on women's political participation and leadership skills plus presentations from the participants themselves about women's political experiences in their countries. The group will spend the third week in Washington, D.C. where they will attend lectures and meet with U.S. State Department staff as well as women leaders, women's rights activists, and other political repre-sentatives concerned with women's democratic organizing and political leadership development.

In Year 2, we will develop a range of pilot training projects in the four target countries. They will draw on needs assessments and nominees from the network of participants from the May 2002 workshop plus those from the two years of training institutes in the 2000-2001 program. Projects might include training in:
(a) practical skills for meeting the responsibilities and expectations of accountability of elective office;
(b) campaign management, polling, voter outreach, and message development for candidates for public office; and (c) activities to enhance the involvement of women in the electoral process and civic involvement at the local as well as national level. The focus of these in-country training programs will take cognizance of the Strategic Objectives of the U.S. missions on democratic governance (Mali), public policy decisions reflecting civic input (Ghana), and enhancing skills of office-holders to sustain the transition to civilian government (Nigeria).

This program is part of the larger MSU African Internet Connectivity Project undertaken by MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online and the African Studies Center to facilitate the development of Internet resources, training, and networking for higher education in Africa as well as to support political organizing and to promote emerging sustainable democracies in Africa. This program promises considerable benefit, with a strong multiplier effect, for women's groups, professional associations, educational organizations, and political leadership in these four countries and throughout Africa. Americans who have professional interests in Africa and women's political involvement and in the institutions of West African higher education and research also will benefit from this partnership. The Women and International Development Program at MSU is also a partner in this project. External partners include the Institute of African Democracy (IAD), the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the West African Research Centre (WARC) and H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences OnLine.