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A Detailed Look: Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) shows the poorest performance in the overall SIGI 2012 rankings. Nine out of 10 bottom-ranking countries are in SSA, with Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Mali being ranked 83, 85 and 86 out of 86 respectively. Exceptionally, South Africa is ranked at 4 in the top 10. Namibia and Rwanda also show a stronger performance compared to the rest of the region, being ranked at 21 and 28 respectively. SSA shows the poorest performance across most sub-indices of the region – Restricted Resources and Entitlements, Discriminatory Family Code and Physical Integrity.

Discrimination in the family and in accessing resources often stems from dual or tri-partite legal systems, where customary or religious laws often discriminate against women. Even where civil laws have been introduced to provide equal rights to inheritance and ownership, these are not necessarily implemented or respected at a local level due to persistent social norms and discriminatory attitudes. Women’s access to productive resources is a serious challenge in the region, particularly given the significant share of women working in agriculture. Early marriage is a significant problem in some parts of the region – in Niger and Mali, 61% and 50% respectively of girls aged 15-19 are married. In some countries such as Mali or Chad, the law provides that the father is the head of the household and bears sole parental authority.

Despite progress across the region in introducing laws to address violence against women, rape within marriage is not criminalised for over half the countries in the region and 12 countries have no laws addressing domestic violence. Attitudes that normalise domestic violence are widespread in many countries – over 75% of women in Guinea, Ethiopia, Somali, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mali agree that domestic violence is justified in some circumstances. Although female genital mutilation (FGM) remains prevalent for many countries in the region (Somalia has the highest prevalence at 98%), some countries have shown significant improvements including Kenya, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Malawi. Countries are starting to introduce laws to prohibit FGM with Eritrea introducing a law in 2007, Kenya introducing a law in 2001 and Uganda passing a law in 2009. Women’s reproductive autonomy is limited across the region with on average around one in five women reporting an unmet need for family planning. One area where the region has made impressive progress is in ensuring women’s political participation: 17 countries have quotas for women’s political participation at national and/or sub-national levels.