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Graça Machel, a prominent rights campaigner and the widow of Nelson Mandela, has told the BBC more women should have been included in debates at the first-ever Africa climate summit.

At the recently concluded three-day gathering in Kenya’s capital, African heads of state agreed on a unified position for the continent ahead of November's COP28 summit - including a proposed a global carbon tax regime.

Ms Machel, who is deputy chair of The Elders - a group of senior statesmen founded by Mr Mandela in 2007 to tackle some of the world's most pressing problems, said this was a step worth celebrating.

She lauded some of the innovative ways of dealing with climate change that had been presented in Nairobi, saying: “Africa is not here to be helped. Africa is here to offer opportunities to offer investment, to offer solutions.”

But the 77-year-old Mozambican campaigner said women had to be at the centre of the debate in future: “We have to stop this thing of women speaking from the window.”

Even when women shouted from a window, those coming up with resolutions failed to hear them, she said.

"Women have to be at the centre of the decision. So we as women, women's organisations, we have to grab that place. It isn't going to be offered to us.

 Those who are in leadership really have to understand that the times that we had only blue, grey, and black suit alone in decision making, is gone."