by Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey Introduction – Nawi Challenging Neoliberal Development in Africa The African continent is a hotbed of macroeconomic policy experiments and changes.These shifts are not occurring by default but are linked to the continent’s experiences with colonialism, coloniality, and imperialism. The legacies have shaped its interaction with the West and other countries in…
Category: Feature
African Women in Digital Spaces Redefining Social Movements on the Continent and in the Diaspora by Msia Kibona Clark and Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers Ltd, 2023
by Amanda Odoi Social media activism has become a pivotal global tool in recent decades for pushing and extending the feminist agenda, particularly among young feminists. With the widespread availability of smartphones and easy access to social media platforms, users now have access to a plethora of information on subjects ranging from news and gossip…
Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa, edited by Desiree Lewis and Gabeba Baderoon. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2021.
by Mardiya Siba Yahaya Writing the Self, Re-telling and Positioning Surfacing is an anthology that unravels, expands and rebuilds feminist practices as we know them.The book highlights the realities and thoughts of South African feminists and actively makes use of “writing the self” (Baderoon 2015) as a literary tool, but is not limited to it….
Public-Private Partnership: A Landmark of Mainstream Development Discourse and Why Feminists Should Worry
by Corina Rodriguez Enriquez The mainstream development discourse has located the idea of blended finance as a central element.The key argument is that States do not have sufficient resources to meet the investments needed to promote and sustain development. For this reason, it is necessary to combine different sources of financing, including the private sector…
Land Grabbing: A Big Toll on Women Farmers – a Case Study of Segou Region in Mali
by Asmao Diallo In the wake of multiple crises, including economic instability, food shortage, energy crisis, and climate change, African farmers’ land relationships have under- gone remarkable changes in recent years. These changes in land relationships were initially brought about by the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) of the 1980s imposed by theWorld Bank and the…
Fishmeal Production and the Dispossession of Women in The Gambia
by Fatou H. Jobe This paper examines how large-scale fishmeal processing impacts women’s work in The Gambia. Fishmeal factories use bonga (Ethmalosa fimbriata), a staple fish inThe Gambia, to produce fishmeal for the global aquaculture industry.The Gambian government yearns for FDI in fishmeal factories to industrialise the fisheries sector, increase fisheries contribution to GDP and…
Women Farm Workers in Zimbabwe: The Social Policy Outcomes Two Decades after the Transformative Fast Track Land Reform
by Tom Tom and Resina Banda Women farm workers have so far received limited scholarly attention in Zimbabwe’s agrarian and labour policy literature. This is in a context where a conscious understanding of land reform as a social policy instrument is paltry. Taking women farm workers as the prime focus and using an empirical case…
“That Woman is a Farmer”: Gender and the Changing Character of Commercial Agriculture in Zimbabwe
by Newman Tekwa Female participation in commercial agriculture as part of women’s work in Zimbabwe remains inadequately documented and theorised. In a context of land reform and framed within the Transformative Social Policy framework, this paper seeks to highlight commercial agriculture as a new work role for women that challenges the existing gender system characterising…
Workplace Experiences of Infrastructure Sector Participants in South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme
by Ramona Baijnath The dominant narrative of Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) ben- eficiaries in South Africa has been largely documented through government communication channels under the titles of Beneficiary Stories and EPWP Changing LivesTestimonials.These stories indicate that PublicWorks Programme (PWP) beneficiaries are able to save or invest towards the realisation of short- term goals…
Continuity and Change:Women’s Work in the Kente Economy of Bonwire, Ghana
by Dede Amanor-Wilks Asante weaving traditions have survived relatively unchanged for more than 300 years.Yet the productive role that women once played as cotton growers and spinners has been eroded while a traditional ban on women entering the loom has proved difficult to overturn conclusively. Kente has been studied as an art form but rarely…