This issue of FA reflects on Africa’s 21st century feminist struggles and movements, paying particular attention to the continuities and changes in terrains, organisational formations, politics, and strategies. The issue is inspired by the visibility of young feminist leadership in recent and ongoing struggles for decolonisation, democratisation, economic justice, and emancipation such as the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, otherwise referred to as the Arab Spring; the RhodesMustFall and FeesMustFall campaigns in South Africa; the Black Lives Matter movement; the uprisings against dictatorship and misrule in Sudan, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria; as well as more localised struggles against land and natural resource dispossession and immiseration across Africa.The unforgettable and emblematic media images of AishaYesufu of Nigeria and Alaa Salah of Sudan addressing massive demonstrations, and of young women leading campaigns in Tahrir Square, on university campuses and in the streets in Egypt, South Africa, and Namibia respectively, drew attention to women’s leadership and unsettled notions that they are second-tier players in national, Pan-African, and global struggles. While for superficial observers the sight of women on frontlines was unexpected and new, feminist scholars, drawing on their research on the long traditions of women’s activism, have seen these developments as a specific conjuncture in the movement building, thought leadership, and struggle credentials of African women.
The feature articles in the issue are the outcome of empirical research that builds on a respectable corpus by Africa’s feminists; one that has chronicled rural and urban women’s struggles for national liberation and for emancipation and gender equality since independence, to which Feminist Africa (FA) has made significant contributions. This literature has shown that struggles during the colonial period in which women played pivotal roles such as the Aba Women’s War in Nigeria, the cocoa holdups in Ghana, the Nyabinghi movements of East and Central Africa, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the liberation movements against Portuguese colonial rule in Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique, and the anti-apartheid movements in Namibia and South Africa, have laid firm foundations for the more recent struggles against imperialism, neoliberalism, and dispossession.
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Feminist-Africa-April-2024-Vol-5.1_-Africas-21st-Century-Feminist-Struggles21.06.24