The East African Women’s Conference – 1990

The idea of holding an East African Women’s Conference was first mooted at a meeting held at ACFODE, with the visiting Vice–President of the Women’s World Banking, Ms Mary Adhiambo hosted by the Women’s Finance and Credit Trust in 1990. With Ms Sarah Mangali an SNV technical advisor at UWFCT, Ms Odhiambo visited ACFODE
and held a meeting with Miria Matembe, the Chairperson, and Maude Mugisha, the Executive Secretary.

Ms Adhiambo pointed out that East African women would do better to organize as a region. She mentioned that in 1964, women in the region had converged in Limuru, Kenya to discuss women’s agenda in the post–Independence East
Africa. It was noted that since that time women in the region had not met again. The preparations for the UN Third World Conference held in Nairobi in 1985 happened when Uganda was in turmoil and not able to participate fully in the preparations or in the conference itself.

During the meeting, the SNV technical advisor working with UWFCT at the time promised to share the idea of an East African Women’s Conference with the SNV Director in Uganda. She wrote a loose minute and put it on a file at SNV but the idea was not followed up until 1992 when SNV employed a gender advisor, Ms Elizabeth Kharono. Internally SNV decided to take forward the idea of the East African Conference linking it to the 4th World Conference on Women scheduled to be held in Beijing in 1995.