By Mariagoretti Swanta Ankut

A Constitutional Promise Unfulfilled

On the morning of 22 January 2018 in Kenya, hundreds of women marched through Nairobi to protest the president’s failure to appoint women to at least one-third of government positions, as Kenya’s 2010 constitution requires. The constitutional requirement was clear: no more than two-thirds of members of any elective or appointive body could be of the same gender. Yet more than 15 years later, that constitutional promise remains unfulfilled.

The Supreme Court gave President Uhuru Kenyatta a deadline of 27 August 2015 to implement the two-thirds gender rule. During his 10 years in office, Parliament attempted to pass the necessary legislation 11 times, but each effort failed due to repeated quorum challenges and a lack of political will. Although Bills were introduced on several occasions, many Members of Parliament failed to attend key votes or opposed the proposed mechanisms for implementing the quota, preventing the legislation from securing the support required for passage.

Justice John Mativo was among those who expressed frustration with Parliament’s continued failure to implement the constitutional requirement. In Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) & 2 Others v Attorney General & Another (High Court Constitutional Petition No. 371 of 2016), delivered on 29 March 2017, the High Court issued an order of mandamus directing Parliament and the Attorney General to enact the required legislation within 60 days and report progress to the Chief Justice.

Rather than complying with the High Court’s order, Parliament appealed against the decision. It argued that dissolving the legislature for failing to enact the legislation would be an excessive and disproportionate remedy, particularly given the political and procedural difficulties that had repeatedly frustrated previous attempts to pass the Bill. Parliament also contended that Article 261(7) of the Constitution, which provides that the Chief Justice shall advise the President to dissolve Parliament if mandatory legislation is not enacted—should be interpreted as discretionary rather than mandatory.

In 2023, President William Ruto formed a committee called the Two-Thirds Multi-Sectoral Working Group. Its core purpose was to break the decade-long legislative deadlock and design a realistic, legal, and politically viable roadmap to implement the two-thirds gender rule under Articles 27(8) and 81(b) of the Constitution. The Working Group proposed a package of legislative, institutional, financial and social reforms aimed at finally operationalising the constitutional requirement. Its recommendations included measures to combat electoral gender-based violence, strengthen campaign finance regulation, improve gender-responsive budgeting, establish monitoring mechanisms across public institutions and promote public education to challenge discriminatory social norms. The report was submitted to Parliament in April 2024. Two years later, its recommendations remain largely unimplemented.

The Implementation Gap

Kenya’s experience reflects a broader paradox across Africa. The continent has some of the world’s most progressive legal frameworks for advancing women’s rights, yet implementation remains persistently weak. The African Union’s Maputo Protocol is widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive regional treaties on women’s rights. Countries such as Rwanda have achieved world-leading levels of women’s political representation, while South Africa’s Constitution is internationally recognised for its strong equality guarantees. Yet for millions of African women, these legal protections remain largely aspirational. As UN Women observed in its 2023 report, Africa continues to experience one of the widest gaps globally between legal rights and women lived reality.

Different Countries, Different Barriers

Rwanda: Representation Without Full Empowerment

If Kenya illustrates the consequences of constitutional non-compliance, Rwanda presents a different challenge: numerical representation does not automatically translate into substantive equality. Women occupy more than 60 per cent of parliamentary seats—the highest proportion in the world—and the Constitution guarantees a minimum 30 per cent representation in decision-making bodies.

This has contributed to important policy gains, particularly in education and maternal health. Yet critics, including Human Rights Watch, argue that political power remains highly centralised, limiting the ability of parliamentarians to shape independent policy. Meanwhile, many rural women continue to face poverty, unequal access to land and unpaid care responsibilities. Rwanda demonstrates that quotas can open doors, but they cannot, on their own, dismantle structural inequality.

Nigeria: Federalism and Fragmented Enforcement

Nigeria illustrates a different obstacle to implementation: federalism. While the country has adopted important legal and policy frameworks to advance women’s rights, implementation varies significantly across its 36 states, leaving many women with vastly different levels of protection depending on where they live.

Nigeria’s federal structure means that many national laws require adoption by individual states before they take effect. As a result, women’s access to justice and protection against gender-based violence often depends on where they live. Some states have enacted progressive legislation, while others have delayed implementation or failed to adopt key protections altogether. Federalism then, is a double-edged sword, that allows local governance but also creates a patchwork of legal protection that leaves many Nigerian women with rights on paper but no guarantee of those rights in practice.

The Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, 2015 (VAPP Act) highlights the gap between legal reform and implementation in Nigeria. The Act was a significant step forward, criminalising practices such as female genital mutilation, domestic violence, and harmful widowhood rites. Although it initially applied only where states adopted corresponding legislation, 34 states, including the Federal Capital Territory, have now domesticated the Act.

Despite this progress, implementation remains uneven. In many states, inadequate police training, weak survivor support services, and inconsistent enforcement continue to limit the Act’s effectiveness. Domestic violence is often treated as a private family matter, prosecutions are rare, and many survivors still struggle to access justice and protection.

Similarly, The Gender and Equal Opportunities (GEO) Bill, which seeks to domesticate international obligations such as CEDAW, has repeatedly failed to pass the National Assembly despite being introduced several times since 2010. The repeated failure to enact the GEO Bill illustrates a broader implementation gap. Nigeria has ratified major international and regional women’s rights instruments yet delays in domestication and weak enforcement continue to limit women’s rights in political participation, inheritance, marriage and employment.

South Africa: Strong Laws, Weak Institutions

South Africa illustrates perhaps the greatest paradox of all: some of the continent’s strongest legal protections for women’s rights coexist with persistently high levels of gender-based violence.

Its post-apartheid Constitution is world-renowned for its protections. Courts have consistently advanced women’s rights, striking down discriminatory practices and affirming reproductive freedoms. Yet South Africa remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women. Femicide, or killing of women and girls because of their gender, is the most extreme and brutal manifestation of violence. It is driven by discrimination against women and girls, unequal power relations, gender stereotypes, or harmful social norms, which can escalate to a deadly outcome. The fourth national femicide study in South Africa revealed that three women were killed every day by an intimate partner from 2020 – 2021. Survivors are turned away from police stations, cases collapse due to delays, and shelters struggle to survive on shoestring budgets. As Oxfam observed, this “second pandemic” of gender-based violence continues to thrive in the gap between progressive legislation and effective implementation.

South Africa demonstrates that strong constitutional protections and progressive jurisprudence are not enough. Without adequately resourced institutions and effective implementation, even the strongest legal frameworks cannot guarantee women’s safety.

Zimbabwe: When Custom and Law Collide

Zimbabwe offers another perspective on the implementation gap. According to human rights lawyer and gender rights expert Mosupatsila Nare, the country’s challenge lies not in the absence of legal protections but in the complex interaction between legal, institutional, political and cultural barriers. The coexistence of statutory and customary law continues to reinforce patriarchal practices, particularly in matters of marriage, inheritance and property ownership, often undermining constitutional guarantees of equality.

Institutional weaknesses further compound these challenges. Bodies such as the Zimbabwe Gender Commission remain under-resourced, while law enforcement agencies frequently fail to respond effectively to gender-based violence.

Politically, weak accountability and the underrepresentation of women in decision-making reflect a broader lack of commitment to gender equality. At the community level, entrenched patriarchal norms and women’s economic dependence continue to limit the practical enjoyment of their rights, particularly in rural areas.

These challenges persist despite important legal reforms. Zimbabwe’s 2013 Constitution strengthened protections for women’s rights, the Marriages Act of 2022 modernised aspects of family law, and the Constitutional Court’s landmark decision outlawing child marriage marked a significant step forward. Yet, as Nare observes, legal reform alone cannot transform women’s lives without consistent enforcement, adequately resourced institutions and sustained political commitment.

Why Does the Implementation Gap Persist?

The experiences of Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe reveal that the gap between law and reality is not accidental. Although each country faces distinct challenges, four interconnected factors consistently undermine the effective implementation of women’s rights: weak political will, under-resourced institutions, inadequate investment, and deeply entrenched social norms.

At the political level, Passing progressive laws earns governments international prestige but enforcing them often means confronting powerful interests and challenging deep-seated norms. Many leaders stop at the symbolic.  Too often, reform ends with the adoption of legislation rather than its implementation. As a result, constitutional guarantees and statutory protections become symbolic commitments rather than lived realities.

Weak institutions further widen this gap. Laws are only as effective as the institutions responsible for enforcing them. Yet police officers, prosecutors, courts and gender commissions frequently lack the resources, training or independence needed to protect women’s rights effectively. As a UNDP study noted, even the institutions established to uphold equality can reproduce the very discriminatory attitudes they are intended to dismantle.

Limited investment also remains a significant barrier. Effective implementation requires far more than declarations – it means funding shelters, training police, establishing specialised courts, and providing support for survival.

Yet ministries responsible for gender equality and women’s rights are often among the least-resourced public institutions. In Nigeria, for example, funding for gender desks within police stations has been inconsistent, while in South Africa many shelters operate at half capacity due to budget cuts, leaving many survivors with nowhere to turn.

Finally, legal reform alone cannot overcome deeply rooted social and cultural norms. Patriarchal attitudes continue to shape decisions within households, communities and public institutions, influencing everything from political participation and property ownership to the reporting and prosecution of gender-based violence. Until these underlying norms are challenged alongside legal reform, the promise of equality will remain difficult to realise.

The consequence of weak enforcement is borne by women and girls every day. The World Bank estimates that gender-based violence drains African economies of up to 1.5 percent of GDP annually through lost productivity, health care expenses, and justice costs. But the greatest cost is immeasurable: the silenced voices of survivors, the unfulfilled potential of girls denied equal opportunity, and the persistent insecurity in homes and communities. “Our Constitution promises us freedom, but in our streets, we live in fear,” one South African activist told Al Jazeera in 2022.

What Works?

While the implementation gap remains significant, experiences from across Africa demonstrate that it can be narrowed when governments move beyond passing laws to invest in enforcement.

Lesson 1: Build enforcement into the law

The first lesson is that legislation must be accompanied by clear implementation and accountability mechanisms. Sierra Leone’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act of 2022 illustrate this approach. Rather than simply establishing a 30 per cent quota for women’s representation, the Act created monitoring mechanisms and penalties for non-compliance. Unlike Kenya’s two-thirds gender rule, implementation was built into the legislation itself, recognising that rights are meaningful only when institutions are required—and empowered—to enforce them.

Lesson 2: Invest in specialised institutions

A second lesson is the importance of investing in specialised institutions. Ethiopia’s gender-sensitive courts and specialised police units have improved access to justice for survivors of gender-based violence. Similarly, South Africa’s Thuthuzela Care Centres provide integrated medical, legal and psychological support through a single service point, reducing delays and the trauma of navigating fragmented systems, improving coordination and increasing conviction rates in cases of sexual violence. These examples demonstrate that implementation succeeds when governments invest not only in legal reform but also in the institutions responsible for delivering justice.

Lesson 3: Political commitment matters

Ultimately, the most important lesson is that implementation is a matter of political choice. Countries that combine progressive legislation with effective institutions, adequate resources and sustained political commitment are far more likely to translate legal rights into meaningful protection for women. The challenge, therefore, is not that Africa lacks the legal frameworks needed to advance gender equality. The challenge is ensuring that those frameworks are consistently implemented and adequately resourced.

From Paper Rights to Lived Equality

So, can equality ever truly become a lived reality for African women? The answer depends less on passing new laws than on enforcing those already in place.

Governments must be held accountable not only for drafting progressive legislation but also for funding, monitoring, and delivering results. Civil society, from grassroots women’s groups to national advocacy networks, must continue to act as watchdogs and catalysts for change. Regional bodies like the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights must press states harder, using naming-and-shaming and peer review mechanisms to spotlight non-compliance. And crucially, cultural change must be pursued through schools, religious leaders, and media to chip away at the patriarchal norms that undermine enforcement.

The women who marched through the streets of Nairobi in January 2018 were not asking for new rights. They were demanding that governments honour the promises they had already made. Their message resonates far beyond Kenya. Until States match legislative ambition with political will, effective institutions and adequate resources, equality will remain a constitutional promise rather than a lived reality for millions of African women.

Mariagoretti Swanta Ankut is a Legal Researcher/Assistant at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Banjul, The Gambia. She has over 10 years’ experience spanning legal, government, and nonprofit sectors in Nigeria, and holds an LLB (Hons.) and a Barrister-at-Law (BL) qualification from the University of Maiduguri and Nigerian Law School.