Pan-African Gender Integration Platform (PA-GIP)
The Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) have set up a Pan-African Gender Integration Platform (PA-GIP) for gender-responsive malaria advocacy and policy. This platform (PA-GIP) will serve as an Africa-led resource for gender integration (GI) advisory services and knowledge generation. The PA-GIP will provide a Pan-African perspective which will help uncover new ways to deal with complex gender-related topics and to identify, contextualize and integrate gender-transformative approaches into malaria advocacy and policy frameworks to advance both malaria and gender equality outcomes.
The current project shall carry out three key activities in two-and-a-half years as follows:
This activity aims to build/strengthen the technical, functional, organizational, and systemic capacities of the CEGENSA team to take over from Stanford University’s Global Center for Gender Equality’s (GCfGE) as the provider of gender and malaria technical assistance services for the BMGF grantees. The goal therefore is to build/strengthen capacity on gender transformative malaria advocacy, policy engagement, and programming. Under this activity, CEGENSA’s team of multidisciplinary gender experts will undergo a concerted capacity strengthening activities to set them up for a successful takeover from the GCfGE. Global Center for Gender Equality (GCfGE) has been contracted as the main technical partner for the core GI strengthening phase. This decision was made based on GCfGE’s extensive GI expertise and their in-depth knowledge and familiarity with foundation processes. CEGENSA will sub-contract to GCfGE as part of a 3-phase, ~9-month engagement.
CEGENSA will assume the management and growth of the Gender & Malaria Community of Practice (CoP) to ensure the ongoing engagement and resourcing of the CoP’s advocacy agenda. This work will include but will not be limited to:
- Taking over management of and adding to CoP materials and resources online.
- Designing and facilitating regular convenings in person and online as required by the CoP.
- Providing mechanisms for regular communications and connecting and amplifying CoP work including aligning and coordinating information about work and networks.
- Engaging underrepresented communities in the work (e.g., malaria endemic country participation, gender community, non-English speakers).
This activity will be an opportunity to socialize CEGENSA with key malaria grantees and to enhance their proficiency of the work happening at the gender-malaria intersection.
Under this activity, CEGENSA will test their enhanced capacity by conducting gender analyses of national malaria strategic plans and review of GI literature. These learnings will be a public good and resource for malaria and gender equality partners. CEGENSA’s gender experts will partner with local GI experts to create knowledge pieces for Ghana, Uganda, Senegal, and Cameroon. There will be:
- A Pan African review of GI literature by the GI reading group as a capacity-building activity for knowledge generation.
- Gender analysis of existing National Malaria Strategic Plans for select malaria endemic countries and recommendations to improve gender integration that could be used by country partners.
- Developing and/or improving proficiency in malaria-gender data and policy analysis – review of available toolkits and their adaptation if needed. Contextualization of existing evidence on the intersection of malaria and gender for African contexts, with further disaggregation by select priority endemic countries.
It is expected that CEGENSA’s Pan-African perspective will uncover new ways to deal with complex gender-related topics and to identify, contextualize and integrate gender-transformative approaches into malaria advocacy and policy frameworks to advance both malaria and gender equality outcomes.