Corina Rodriguez Enriquez and Sue Godt speak with Allana Kembabazi of ISER on PPPs and Feminist Struggles. Corina Rodriguez Enriquez and Sue Godt spoke with Allana Kembabazi about the work of the Ugandan NGO Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER) to address the growing role of public-private partnerships (PPP) in the country. In a…
Category: Conversations
A Union like None Other on the Continent – Akosua K. Darkwah Speaks with Deborah Freeman Danquah, General Secretary of the Union Of Informal Workers’ Associations (Uniwa) of TUC Ghana
Globally, the African continent has the largest percentage of workers in informal employment. Based on data collected in 2016 by Bonnet et al. (2019: 10), 89% of workers in the sub-region work in informal employment.The figure is higher for women than it is for men, standing at 92% and 86% respectively.Workers in informal employment are…
Working with Rural Women to Secure Resource Access – Akua O. Britwum speaks with Fati Abigail Abdulai
Akua Britwum spoke to Fati Abigail Abdulai from Ghana, in a virtual interview on Sunday the 2nd of May, 2021. Fati Abdulai is the Director of Widows and Orphans Movement (WOM) of Ghana. She has held her position since 2013, when Fati’s mother, the founder of the WOM, retired. Fati had been supporting her mother…
Working with the State to Secure Rural Women’s Rights – Akua O. Britwum speaks with Rizwana Waraich
Akua Britwum speaks with Rizwana Waraich of Pakistan virtually, on Tuesday the 4th of May 2021. Rizwana is a board member of the Lok Sanjh Foundation, an NGO based in rural Pakistan, and also works as a freelance consultant. In this interview, she reveals the struggles with contradictions within state support structures that are supposed…
A Female Inventor Ahead of her Time – Akosua K. Darkwah speaks with Veronica Bekoe
African scientists have responded to the pandemic by developing a range of largely low-tech innovations to either ease testing/treatment or assist with adherence to the containment measures imposed by various states. In Dakar, Senegal, students built a multifunctional robot that helped caregivers treat patients while minimising the risk of infections; in Nigeria, another student built…
Addressing the Needs of People with Disability During the COVID-19 Pandemic – Akosua K. Darkwah speaks with Comfort Mussa
The World Health Organization estimates that 15% of the world’s population has a disability of one form or the other (WHO, 2021). With a population of approximately 1,390,000,000 people on the African continent (Worldometer, n.d.), this translates to 220,000,000 or roughly the entire population of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Life for Africa’s citizens with…
Women’s Organising in Nigeria During the COVID-19 Pandemic – Akosua K. Darkwah speaks with Azeenarh Mohammed, Buky Williams and Chitra Nagarajan
African women have long organised for different purposes and so it has been with the pandemic. In different parts of the continent, women have come together to address different problems thrown up by the pandemic. One of the major fallouts has been gender-based violence (GBV). Across the globe, the incidence of GBV has risen in…
Intimate Archives: Rethinking Gender Studies in Africa – Srila Roy and Caio Simões De Araújo speak with Simidele Dosekun, Oluwakemi Balogun, and Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué
On 14 April 2021, the Governing Intimacies: Sexualities, Gender and Governance in the Postcolonial World research project, convened by Associate Professor Srila Roy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, hosted a webinar discussion between Oluwakemi M. Balogun (University of Oregon), Simidele Dosekun (London School of Economics), and Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué(University of Wisconsin) about their…
Feminist Solidarity in Resistance to Extractivism and the Construction of Alternatives – Charmaine Pereira speaks with Marianna Fernandes and Nzira de Deus
Charmaine Pereira spoke to two of the feminists organising a path-breaking transnational project of feminist mobilisation and solidarity building across three former Portuguese colonies—Mozambique, Angola and Brazil. The discussion focused on what was involved in bringing together women from these three countries for a week-long workshop in Maputo to share experiences and strengthen feminist solidarity…
Doing Beauty as African Feminists: A Conversation between Aleya Kassam, Fatma Emam, Valérie Bah and Yewande Omotoso
Four feminists from different parts of the continent converse, electronically, about their own beauty practices: Aleya Kassam (33, Kenya); Fatma Emam (33, Egypt); Valérie Bah (29, Benin and Haiti); Yewande Omotoso (35, Nigeria). Moderated by Simidele Dosekun.