By Charmaine Pereira and Dzodzi Tsikata This issue of Feminist Africa marks the successful transition of the journal from its birthplace, the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, across the continent to the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Accra. After a three-year gap, Feminist Africa has…
Category: Feminist Africa: Vol.2 Issue 1 – Extractivism | Resistance |Alternatives
WoMin – the Journey from Research Initiative to an African Ecofeminist Alliance
by Margaret Mapondera and Samantha Hargreaves Introduction—the political background to and rationale for WoMin’s existence Oil was identified about five years ago in Nwoya district [Uganda]. They have started to install infrastructure and the [extraction site] is under tight security. Since people discovered the oil, there has been land grabbing…so now people are buying up…
Feminist Africa, Volume 2, Issue 1 (2021): Extractivism, Resistance, Alternatives
By Charmaine Pereira and Dzodzi Tsikata This issue of Feminist Africa marks the successful transition of the journal from its birthplace, the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, across the continent to the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Accra. After a three-year gap, Feminist Africa has…
Global Rights – Gender on Extractive Agendas
By Abiodun Baiyewu This Profile focuses on Global Rights’ work on natural resource governance. Global Rights is a non-governmental organisation based in Nigeria that works on a spectrum of issues, including equitable resource governance, human security and access to remedies, women’s rights, and security and human rights programmes.The organisation’s programmes address governance failures that exacerbate…
Negotiating Gender Equity in the Global South: The Politics of Domestic Violence Policy by Sohela Nazneen, Sam Hickey, Eleni Sifaki, eds.
By Shireen Hassim Three decades have passed since dramatic changes in authoritarian societies – the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of one-party and military regimes in Africa and Latin America – generated feminist interest in formal political institutions.A substantial body of literature in the social sciences began to seriously address the question of…
Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses by Hilary Matfess
By Títílope F. Ajàyí Women and the War on Boko Haram is a bold and coherent effort to decolonise victim narratives about women’s roles in, and experiences of, the conflict in Nigeria’s northeast. Before this book, although there had been a growing focuson women as perpetrators and enablers of violence by scholars like Freedom Onuoha,…
Contextualising Extractivism in Africa
By Charmaine Pereira and Dzodzi Tsikata AbstractThis article contextualises the phenomenon of extractivism in Africa, exploring the extent to which the different meanings of extractivism in the literature contribute to an understanding of its gendered character. We argue that extractivism is embedded in the changing dynamics of contemporary capitalism and configured differently in diverse social…
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…
Reclaiming Our Land and Labour: Women’s Resistance to Extractivist Agriculture in South-eastern Ghana
By Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey AbstractNeoliberal development projects have invaded multiple spaces. In rural areas, women’s livelihood activities are targets for interventions in the name of poverty reduction and this is often conveyed through commercial agricultural production schemes. These initiatives have become the source of tension between householdbased production and capitalist production systems. This qualitative research…
“Cinderellas” of Our Mozambique Wish to Speak: A Feminist Perspective on Extractivism
By Teresa Cunha and Isabel Casimiro All in uniform. Some in army uniforms, others in administrator uniforms. (Pepetela, 2018) AbstractMozambique is currently undergoing an intense cycle of extractive activities, with most of the generated benefits being transferred to international corporations and local elites. This has given rise to extreme inequality, the emergence ofviolent conflicts, the…