By Kwamboka Oyaro

As delegates from different countries enumerate achievements made in gender participation in development, another group is crying foul. Addressing the Sixth African Regional Conference on Women in Addis Ababa, Kenya's Josephine Sinyo, said governments and women in general have sidelined people with disabilities. "Women with disabilities don't feature anywhere in this forum. Yet we suffer double jeopardy on the grounds of disability and being a woman."

Sinyo, who is blind, said that when data is taken on poverty, disability is not an agenda, as women with disability lie on the bottom of the poverty line. Thus, when planning for bridging the gaps on poverty, women with disabilities are not included. She said that the 12 challenges facing women identified at the Fourth Women Conference in Beijing affect disabled women as well, but disabled women had been marginalised at the conference.

Peace has been given prominence at the conference. "But they never talked of the more than 40,000 women who have been disabled by war and conflict. They never asked them to come and give their testimonies. The ones talking of war experiences are not disabled, giving the impression that war does not render many women, children and men disabled," says Sinyo.

She said of the hundreds of women from 53 African countries attending the forum, only three women with disabilities were invited.

"I must recommend the Kenyan, Ethiopian and Ugandan governments for sponsoring representatives with disabilities. Angola, Burundi, Sudan and Rwanda where war has left many people with disabilities are not represented in this conference by that group!" she said. Some countries' national censuses exclude women with disabilities and other data collected does not take into consideration women and girls with disabilities."This makes planning and allocation of resources to disability and gender programmes extremely difficult."

By Ferial Haffajee

Miners are still at the heart of the African economy - but women want a slice of the action. And they're getting it, if the testimony of women miners this week is anything to go by. "Mining has been male dominated by about 100 percent, I would say. But I felt that I should venture into this lucrative area which men have kept for themselves," said the ebullient Namaku Kaingu, who is the chairperson of the SADC Women in Mining Trust.

Kaingu is a gemstone trader, excavator and miner. As a successful businesswoman, she is a symbol of a changing generation in Africa. Women are tired of being victims and are hungry for her recipe. Kaingu's workshop ran well over time and she was stopped by scores of interested women clamouring for information from her.

She is a member of a female mining class that stretches from Burkina Faso to Zambia. A study by the Economic Commission for Africa in 1994 documented over 1.1-million small-scale women miners in Africa. By 1998, the International Labour Organisation showed a jump to between 1.6 and 2.6-million female miners. Political and economic changes have caused the jump. As governments have privatised mining enterprises, more opportunities have opened up and women like Kaingu have jumped at them. "I'm the only bread-winner and I've got lots of brothers and sisters," she says. Kaingu travels six hours a day to her mine where she sleeps in a plastic tent with her workers on the occasion she stays over. She doesn't have a degree in metallurgy or any formal qualification, but has learnt fast. "I don't just sit in Lusaka and mine by remote control," she says. "I got there myself. I sort out my operations."

Mining is still the biggest contributor to gross domestic product in Africa - and could be a key to women's empowerment. The UNIFEM Women in Mining Trust is bringing together a range of women miners including skilled professionals, politicians, entrepreneurs and workers. The Trust trains miners and will help them to access credit - the lack of finance is still a major disincentive for small-scale miners in general and female miners in particular.

For Kaingu, success at mining has been a boost to her profile. "I've got a lot of people who are telling me 'You must be minister of mining, you must be the president, you must go in parliament.' I leave it in the hands of God."