By: Mabel Adorkor Annang
The Centre for Economic Leadership Development (CELD) has organised its maiden edition of Women Leadership Development Forum 2021 in Accra.
The Forum was targeted at educational and training programmes for organizations serious about diversity and elevating the progression of their female talent.
The Forum brought together 25 accomplished women from a wide range of disciplines and industries to build meaningful relationships with one another, exchange ideas by sharing their experiences, and integrate insights from evidence-based research and practical lessons.
The move is to increase the capacity of women, strengthen their resilience, enable them make confident moves by taking more risks, and prepare them to take on more challenging roles as problem solvers.
At the Forum, discussions were focused on management and leadership skills, exploring emerging best practices, and building a personal action plan to elevate women to top positions and contribute by solving rising challenges in today’s fast changing world.
The forum also provided participants with an agenda to learn the necessary skills to create opportunities to develop the confidence to chase after one’s career dreams through a supportive peer learning environment.
The participants were from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and South Africa. The Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, who was also a participant, Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng shared her experience and advised the other participants on how to be unique when executing leadership roles at the workplace.
There were other delegates from the Federal Ministry of Education, Nigeria who said a programme of this sort must be organised regularly to help empower women on how to manage situations at their workplace as a leader.
Speaking at the Forum Deputy Minister of Gender and a Member of Parliament for Walewale Lariba Zuweira Abudu shared her experience on how she managed as a woman in a male dominated Constituency to become a Member of Parliament.
She urged the participants to be confident and not hesitate to take up political positions in their communities and aspire for greater height. She commended the organisers of the forum for such a great initiative.
The participants expressed their views saying the programme had been an eye opener and had boosted their confidence by motivating and encouraging them on how to deal with difficult situations at work. This they said would be emulated.
The programme lasted for a week and on the final day 4 participants who were from other African countries were honoured. They were presented with citations and award placards.
