SOUTH AFRICA: Women Crucial to Tackling Poverty

The South African government claims the key to it achieving its goal of having five million of the country's residents in employment by 2014 rests heavily on tackling the issue of teenage pregnancy.

Speaking at an Independent Development Trust meeting in Plettenberg Bay in Western Cape, deputy public works minister Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu said that teenage pregnancy condemns many women to a life of poverty.

She stated that young girls "sign a contract with poverty" when they become pregnant and that the country needs to do more to educate people about HIV and AIDS prevention, which are also major obstacles in the country's path to economic prosperity.

Ms Bogopane-Zulu pointed to the Bitou municipality in Plettenberg Bay as being a classic example of the problems which exist in South Africa, with stupendous wealth and abject poverty rubbing shoulders in the same district.

A report in the Financial Times recently highlighted the impact the global economic downturn has had on South Africa's hopes of tackling unemployment, claiming that programmes designed to create more jobs have largely been scaled back.