Demographic responses to political transformation in Africa

Abstract

Gender inequality in Africa remains ambiguous because of the steep challenges of women empowerment and development. Litte has been done on the influence of equitable governance on women's empowerment in Africa. Besides, previous empirical studies are limited to studying the influence of democracy on gender equality in education and fail to offer generalisable conclusions. These mixed results have motivated us to evaluate the relationship between a shift in political regime and different measures of women's empowerment in selected Africa countries. Data on indices of women empowerment and political transformation from 1980 through 2017 were analysed using the Pooled Mean Group Panel estimation procedure. It is expected that demographic responses should influence transformation in the political arena in Africa. Therefore, the African government, through legislative and executive domains, should demonstrate a sincere transformational plan for the inclusion of women at all levels.