Ghana Shines at CWP Sub-Region Annual Conference
Thursday, 13th August, 2026
Hon. Comfort Doyoe Cudjoe-Ghansah
Ghana's Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) chapter, led by the West Africa Sub-regional representative, Comfort Doyoe Cudjoe, has emerged as the most active in the West Africa sub-region, according to the CWP West Africa Sub-Region Annual Activities Report covering September 2025 to August 2026, which reviewed the work of chapters in Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
Of the four chapters covered in the report, Ghana's Women's Caucus carried the broadest programme of the year, spanning diplomatic engagement, grassroots advocacy, legislative dialogue and international exchange.
The caucus held meetings with the UK Trade Envoy and MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, and ran capacity-building sessions on civic engagement. It took its work directly to the public through grassroots visits to Madina Market and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, and led advocacy on breast cancer awareness.
On legislative reform, the caucus convened a National Dialogue on the Affirmative Action Act and held a strategic planning meeting with the Youth Caucus. Its international engagement included an exchange programme in Germany and participation in the Association of Parliaments francophones conference in Dakar.
Ghana also used its platform to speak on regional priorities, delivering an African Women's Day floor statement on water and sanitation, and taking part in a regional peer review conference on ending violence against women and girls.
*How Ghana compared across the sub-region
Nigeria's chapter centred its year on the Reserved Seats for Women Bill, running town-hall roundtables, the She Leads event, and an art exhibition on gender inclusion in governance. Notable moments included Speaker Tajudeen Abbas vacating his seat for a 16-year-old girl on International Day of the Girl Child, 16 Days of Activism events, the Women's Policy Lab, and a proposal to reserve 33 percent of parliamentary seats for women. Nigeria also hosted the 9th Africa Women Conference in Accra, ran regional solidarity programmes in Oyo State, and joined gender-based violence workshops in Abuja and Cape Town.
Sierra Leone's Female Parliamentary Caucus reviewed the impact of recent gender-related legal reforms, including the Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Act and the Ending Child Marriage Act. The chapter helped form the Network of Female Ministers and Parliamentarians, ran a reflection session engaging male MPs as allies, examined gender provisions in the proposed constitutional amendment, and joined the Cape Town regional workshop.
Cameroon's chapter focused on public health and children's welfare, participating in a malaria financing workshop, a UNICEF-backed children's rights dialogue, and International Women's Day events on women's health and reproductive rights.
*Shared priorities across the region
Despite the differences in focus, the four chapters converged on a common set of concerns. Reserved-seat legislation, gender-based violence, women's economic empowerment, and regional cooperation through joint workshops and conferences recurred as priorities across all of them, the report noted, pointing to a sub-region increasingly coordinating its advocacy even as each chapter pursues its own national agenda.
For Ghana, the breadth of the year's activity, from market-level advocacy to international exchange, positions its Women's Caucus as a reference point for the sub-region heading into the next reporting cycle.
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