Tweet This is the last in a series of posts discussing intersectionality. Read the previous two here and here. In this clip of The Actors, Denzel Washington speaks about the advice he has given to his daughter. He explains that as a black person, a woman — and a dark-skinned one at that – she is likely [...]

Tweet   This is a guest blog by Elias Wondimu Ethiopia has a rich tradition of independent, intelligent women. From the Queen of Sheba to wedding gown designer Amsale Aberra, these women have helped shaped the cultural and historical trajectory of Ethiopia and beyond. The seven women on this list are members of an extraordinary generation [...]

TweetThis is part II of three blogs about intersectionality. Read the first post here. “Woman is the Nigger of the World” and “The Black Man’s Burden” When Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989, she was criticising work that treated race and gender as exclusive parts of human experience and that as a result [...]

TweetMy next three blogs are going to be about intersectionality, a theory that originates from the black feminist struggle and that has since truly revolutionised academic thought and even state policy. Following dishonest and misleading claims that feminism has always been a white middle class movement by Vagenda Magazine, publications such as the New Statesman, the guardian and The Independent among others have [...]

Tweet I’m very excited to share that I’m shortlisted for Red Magazine’s ‘Red’s Hot Women Awards’ Blogger category. Since the start of MsAfropolitan approximately two years ago, I’ve loved every single minute of blogging and it’s precious to receive encouragement for something that I hope to do ad infinitum. Red’s Hot Women Awards celebrates women [...]

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  The Fufu sessions: Conversations with women who empower is a quarterly interview series where inspiring women of African heritage share their views on work and life. Fufu is a dish typical to a vast amount of African countries albeit sometimes under another name (eg. pap, nshima etc). It is empowering food. It is also the type of [...]

Tweet On this your certain journey Do you ever doubt you have a beauty to match the strength of those of us who carve a strength to match your beauty? ~Abena P.A. Busia Images of Zoe Saldana at the shoot of the Nina Simone biopic have emerged. Her casting is creating so much anger. Resentment. Sadness. [...]

Tweet It’s madly depressing that the same week that a survey by netmums led to a chain of reviews questioning whether feminism is dead was also the week that Panorama aired a documentary about how “an unprecedented scale of child sexual exploitation”  by television presenter Jimmy Saville was covered up by the BBC. I’m not going to write about [...]

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 [...]

TweetTwenty-five years ago Black History Month was officially launched in the UK with an aim to “Promote race equality, equality of opportunity and good relations between persons of different racial groups”. The premise was that it would eventually be eliminated when black history became fundamental to general history. Since then, year after year, come October, black [...]

Tweet   Last weekend I was in Germany and while there I visited a house known as the Green Citadel of Magdeburg (pictured above). It was designed by Friedenreich Hundertwasser, who saw himself as an ‘Architect Doctor’ and a healer of sick buildings. While at the Green Citadel, I could literally feel a part of [...]

TweetThis October 11th marks the first ever International Day of the Girl and people and organisations all around the world will take the day to raise their voices about the significance of supporting girls to feel empowered in the choices and challenges they face in their lives. Meetings and festivities will be taking place across the globe and [...]

TweetThe release of Naomi Wolf’s “Vagina: A New Biography” was met with scathing criticisms from feminists like Laurie Penny, Ariel Levy and Zoe Heller. These influential writers all bring up some valid arguments about problematic ideas presented in the book. Vagina is indeed a book that in many ways feels unfinished and often naïve. It [...]

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 [...]

TweetIn my view, if Kimathi Donkor‘s painting of Queen Nanny of the Maroons was an antique, precious Tarot card, she would be ‘The High Priestess’, standing as a veil between life and death, her arms outstretched; one mercifully forgiving, the other holding a deadly sword, reminding us that when it comes to life, she both [...]

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 [...]

TweetThis is a transcript of a speech I delivered at the Southbank Centre in July. I call it a POWA panel because I was in the company of some of the continent’s most powerful voices and inspirations – Angelique Kidjo, Lebo Mashile, Theo Sowa and our moderator Jessica Horn. Below is also a clip of [...]

TweetI submitted the below post to the Huffington Post editors before the racist and sexist cover image of Michelle Obama as a nude slave appeared in one of Spain’s biggest newspapers, El Mundo’s, supplement. This morning an interview with Gabby Douglas went live revealing that her teammates called her a slave. Unfortunately, the constant tending [...]

Tweet Lupe Fiasco has just released the video for the ‘Bitch Bad’ track off the ‘Food & Liquor 2 ‘ album. The video (embedded below) examines the impact of the word ‘bitch’ in hip hop and how it negatively affects children and society at large. The chorus line is “Bitch bad, woman good, lady better, [...]

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 [...]

TweetFollowing another week of hair-related scandals in entertainment and sports, my latest HuffPo article argues that there is more to the black hair conversation than shallowness or self loathing and that as long as black hair aesthetics are part of a complex social structure we should engage with the conversations critically rather than silence them or [...]

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, [...]

Tweet NEW SERIES LAUNCH!!! I’m very excited to launch a new blog series – Fufu Sessions. Why Fufu Sessions? The full title is Fufu Sessions: Conversations with women who empower. The idea is to do a quarterly highlight with women whose work empowers others in its skilfulness, ethos, creativity and impact and who are also the type [...]

TweetOne outcome of the imbalance in social, political and cultural power between the genders is that our cultural landscape is tainted with false myths around sexuality. When it comes to sexual anatomy, some of these myths have to do with seeing a vagina as something more sacred, erotic and gentle than a penis. A penis [...]

Tweet As part of the Africa Utopia festival, which kicked off on Sunday July 1, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion titled WOMEN, INSPIRATION & LEADERSHIP. I’ll be joining singer and activist Angelique Kidjo, poet Lebo Mashile, Theo Sowa of the African Women’s Development Fund and member of the African Feminist Forum, Jessica Horn to discuss [...]

Tweet  I’m delighted to be featured in the legendary Ms.Magazine today. Ms. Magazine was not only the first feminist magazine to go mainstream but it was also the magazine that inspired the name of this blog. Here’s the first of a three-part series The Femisphere: African Feminist Bloggers, Part 1 Despite centuries of cultural practice that [...]

Tweet It’s giveaway time! Apple is joining the increasing number of brands celebrating African style by including fabulous high-quality Ghanaian made MacBook cases by the socially conscious brand Della to their range. The fun and protective cases will hit the Apple shelves on July 10th but in the meantime I’ve  teamed up with Della who are kindly going [...]