Illiteracy, hunger, abuse and other challenges confronting rural women around the world will become focal issues at an international conference late next month in South Africa, a South African official said on Thursday.

About 2,000 delegates from around the world will also discuss the development of rural women during the 4th World Congress of Rural Women in Durban in the last week of April, said Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana.

Xingwana said the congress would focus on solutions and strategies to enable sustainable rural development, the official BuaNews reported.

The minister said the congress would bring together rural women of the world from different backgrounds to share with each other and learn from each other's experiences.

It would also enable the voices of rural women to be heard by policy makers, provide a market place for women's enterprises to new markets, and consider new ways and possibly partnerships for engagements between civil society and government especially in addressing the needs of rural women, she said.

The three-day congress is expected to issue a declaration to reaffirm governments' commitment to ensure poverty eradication through sustainable rural development, she said.

The congress is held every four years under country-specific themes. The inaugural event took place in Australia in 1994, followed by the United States in 1998 before Spain hosted it in 2002.

At the last congress, a resolution was taken to hold the next in the African continent.

South Africa was chosen because of the country's leading role in issues of gender, transformation and the recognition of human rights, Xingwana said.

Source: Xinhua