TweetThe world has never been as patriarchal as it is today. I’m not claiming that individual societies don’t treat their women better than they did previously, but in the globalised, interconnected world we live in, we can no longer consider issues in an isolated fashion. So as we now consider the situation of women everywhere, [...]
TweetI am happy to announce that I have won the ”Outstanding Achievement in Media” award at the African Diaspora Awards which took place on 2 May 2013. The African Diaspora Awards (ADA) ceremony is an event which pays tribute to African success across all walks of life; emphasising achievement and highlighting inspirational role models in the fields [...]
TweetIf the government passes a proposal that bans miniskirts, Uganda may soon join the list of countries to restrict women from making independent choices about what they wear. If the bill, which has been proposed by (insert drumroll) the minister of ethics, Simon Lokodo, is passed, women who fail to abide may be sentenced to a [...]
TweetOn 24 June 2011, over 5,000 people showed up for an event at the V&A Museum in London titled “Friday Late: Afropolitans”. Now, packing the world famous museum is usually the function of western art and high fashion, but on this night the crowd came to listen to artists like Spoek Mathambo, taste palm wine [...]
Tweet It is most often agreed that poverty, exacerbated by a lack of education, tends to lie behind a widespread belief in witchcraft. However, the reasons people seek scapegoats for their misfortunes is more complex than so. First of all, let’s establish that witch accusations are widespread around Africa. And not only accusations but also [...]
TweetTwo things are growing faster in Africa than anywhere else – religion and the economy. Africa is the most devout continent in the world with 89 percent of participants in a 2012 WIN Gallup survey saying that they were religious, compared to 59 percent in the world at large. In Ghana, the country with the [...]
Tweet When I was seventeen, I got a job as a telephone salesperson of ink cartridges. The worst thing about the job was that I was so good at it. I was promoted and was eventually earning a serious lot of money. I don’t know what made me a successful ink cartridge seller but I [...]
Tweet Is Africa hopeless, hopeful, sinking, growing, shrinking or rising? Such preoccupations repeatedly appear in analyses of Africa. Here are, for instance, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 articles from The Guardian discussing the theme, 1, 2, 3, 4 articles from African Arguments, and from Africa Unchained and TIME to link to just a few. These ruminations are no [...]
Tweet This is a guest post by Solome Lemma – Before we start, it is important to recognize that what we refer to as the African diaspora is not monolithic. There are many diaspora communities with their own histories, interests, needs and opportunities. That said let me get straight to the point. Namely that it [...]
TweetIn October 2010, an over three-decade long campaign to implement a protocol for women’s rights in Africa resulted in the declaration of 2010-2020 as the African Women’s Decade (AWD). I’ve written many articles about the AWD and I launched the MsAfropolitan Boutique in honour of it. Yesterday, I attended the 2nd year Anniversary of the African Women’s Decade hosted [...]
Tweet Why write about gorillas and Africa? Because there is an alarm about Gorillas in the midst of Congo conflict /////// One ~ Tourists will generally shy away from unstable regions but this is not the case when it comes to regions with gorillas so I was wondering about touristic ideas of Africa and its [...]
TweetI’m delighted to share that MsAfropolitan is one of the dozen blogs that make up the just launched Guardian Africa Network. “The Guardian’s new Africa Network will join the debate – around contentious issues such as quality of leadership, the legacy of colonialism, identity politics that pitch women’s and homosexuals’ rights against a form of cultural [...]
TweetWhen people ask me what I do, and I respond that I’m a blogger, and that I blog about topics that primarily concern African women, quite often they proceed to either tell me about an humanitarian or developmental cause they are involved with or have read about. Sometimes they ask me how my blog reaches [...]
Tweet“Nigeria does not have democracy” I tweeted last week, resulting in a brief discussion which Diary of a Media Junkie has put into a storify board. This post develops from that tweet. First of all, let’s adopt a simple definition (by Robert Dahl) of democracy as a political system that allows meaningful competition for positions of [...]
Tweet Firstly, it is important to say that when it comes to theory, it’s more accurate to speak of African feminisms than of one almighty African feminism. Not all African feminists agree with each other–luckily, I’d add, as this would hinder deep reflection of issues such as those listed below–yet respecting differences whilst recognizing a common [...]
Tweet ‘Blackfeminism is not white feminism in blackface‘ – Audre Lorde As a young girl I could not get my head round the society I lived in, where Nigerian men seemed to have many more privileges than women just for being men, a reality I later discovered applied in different ways to other societies as [...]
TweetOn this day, August 1st twelve years ago, in an in-depth interview with Jane Bryce in Bulawayo, Yvonne Vera noted with the expressive character that marks her work, “I would not write if I weren’t in search of beauty, if I was doing it only to advance a cause. I care deeply about my subjects, [...]
TweetAlthough Africa hosts 40% of the world’s biodiversity, 20% of forest reserves and over 50% of the energy potential in the world, what I’ll be referring to as “geocolonialism” is impeding the progress of a flourishing and sustainable environment in Africa and worldwide. This week has seen the much awaited Rio+20 take place, the largest [...]
Tweet I’m in the beautiful city of Libreville in Gabon. From the little that I’ve seen I immediately feel at home here. I especially love how Libreville’s population seem very level-headed, and how despite what feels like a heavy military presence the city’s parks and streets are characterized by people relaxing and enjoying their charming [...]
Tweet Following a passioned debate on my last post Feminism has always existed in Africa, I started to question why the myth of matriarchy in precolonial Africa is popular and here’s why. Because it poses less of a challenge to the status quo. It numbs the anger of the persisting patriarchy we have found ourselves [...]
TweetFeminist activism has always been a part of African society and in a radical way. By radical, I don’t mean the strand of the western feminist movement that very necessarily revolutionized western societies in the 1960s and 1970s, but rather, I mean the mobilized commitment to uprooting patriarchy, imperialism and human injustice to women. In much of premodern [...]
TweetI got back in to London this morning from the YouthSummit and the OpenForum 2012 in Cape Town, a very relevant conference that brought together African thinkers from creative, activist, scholarly, political and technocratic backgrounds. It was expertly put together by OSISA, who as promised created a truly “unapologetic space for reflection and debate”. From [...]
TweetCross-Post with Black Feminists UK and Honestly Abroad We the undersigned women of African /African descent and our supporters, which include anti-racist activists, scholars community leaders and Faith leaders wish to address the Swedish Venus Hottentot Cake Incident. First, we commend our Swedish friends and colleagues, and those from the African-Swedish Diaspora for their substantial contribution to [...]
TweetI don’t tend to get surprised about racist acts, at least not when it’s so stereotypical as this whole tragic ordeal with the Swedish culture minister eating a cake of what is supposed to be a mutilated African woman. As a mixed race person I’ve experienced racism from the places where it possibly chafes the [...]
Tweet Last week, Joyce Banda became the second female head of state in Africa. This kind of development is significant for the continent. Not only is Banda female, which accounts for progress in more equally gendered leadership, but she’s also got a solid background which should help get Malawi out of the economic and political [...]
TweetUpon hearing the term African feminist, many African men and women will say, we as Africans don’t need feminism, we just need to return to our roots to see that there was harmony between the genders. The first problem with such a statement is that Africa is not that simple. African pasts are complex and [...]
TweetThe power of an image became viscerally clear to me recently when I changed my blog profile photo. In the previous one I had this sassy don’t-mess-with-me look, which I do sometimes like to sport in “real” life, but I’m much better represented in this new one. It surprised me that I felt so relieved [...]
Tweet Launched as a tribute to the African Women’s Decade 2010 – 2020, The MsAfropolitan Boutique celebrates the entrepreneurship of Africa and diaspora women as a one-stop shop for fashion, accessories, art and gift collections made by women of African heritage. In 2011, it was featured in the Huffington Post, catchavibe, SOAS World Magazine, Women of [...]
TweetWhen it comes to the ongoing protests and the labour strike in Nigeria it isn’t easy to get a clear perspective of the situation without being in the country. There are many articles by journalists and bloggers who unfortunately aren’t bothering to understand the contextual particularities of the bombings and of the #OccupyNigeria protests. As [...]
Tweet Since 1960 Nigeria has had no more than eleven years of unbroken civilian rule. Out of those, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) now led by Goodluck Jonathan has held a tight grip on power whilst barely contributing to any growth. Shell has just admitted that thousands of barrels of oil have spilt in the Bonga oil leak, the [...]
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