Femsud Consult

The organisation lobbies and networks to promote serious North-South dialogues, partnerships, and sharing of experiences. It believes that if Africa is to develop, this process must come from within Africa.

Specifically, Femsud Consult's activities include:

• Organising forums to address regional and international issues in an effort to stimulate informed, constructive, and mutually respectful communication in the North-South dialogue.
• Promoting forums in the South and in the North with the aim of increasing understanding of prevailing circumstances. Organisers say that this strategy helps participants develop reasonable expectations of each other and is essential for international development cooperation to succeed.
• International networking to facilitate partnerships to fight poverty, ignorance, and diseases in the South. This mainly involves stimulating appropriate interest groups and facilitating necessary working relationships to develop programmes.
• Fostering a sharing of experiences of ways to minimise reduplication when solving problems.
• Facilitating capacity and institutional building.
• Mobilising, empowering, and equipping local groups in Africa to help themselves.

"Because of the relative disadvantaged position of rural women in African societies, Femsud Consult focuses on women in particular but not exclusively. An increased co-operation in the society especially between men and women is one of the prerequisites for sustainable development. An integration of elements such as agriculture, health care, education, water and entrepreneurship can cost-effectively help to improve the living conditions of communities in Africa."

The organisation facilitates improvement in skills and expertise of local people to develop their own ideas in the framework of social, economic, and political renewal. These communities are equipped to run their own affairs, but are also empowered and enlightened about their political rights and responsibilities.

Economic Development, Agriculture, Technology, Gender, Women.

The organisation believes that integration of commercial agriculture, health education, education, handicraft, commerce, and information and communication technology (ICT) is important for the sustainability of women's development in the context of globalisation. Its objectives are to:

• increase the involvement of women in decision-making
• increase participation in general education of girls and women especially
• integrate gender into the availability of training opportunities in the fields of agriculture, health care, management, handicraft, marketing and water supplies
• facilitate capacity and institutional building
• decrease the rate of teenage pregnancies and child mortality
• promote ICT management
• improve awareness of girls, women and men in matters such as politics and food security.