We now have benevolent institutions that are only claimed to lift African feminists from where she now finds herself. The reality is that the poverty and ignorance of African feminists is the glory of most civilizations. Poverty is an institution; ignorance is an industry; a big industry as there are those who want African women to continue to wallow in poverty and ignorance because the downfall and naïve nature of African feminists is in their benefits. The better we wake up to the realities, the safer we are as women of this continent. 

 

Tanzanian Rahma Bajum is an African feminist whose story still remained untold and virtually underrepresented. She is the founder and creative Director of MnM Clothing and design company in Dar Es Salam. Her company focuses on bringing back the love for African prints by producing fashionable and quality African clothes, home decors, furniture, toys and notebooks among others.  She has been working in the youth sector for more than a decade and holds junior and senior positions in different youth organizations as well as international organizations. She is someone who believes that changing policies and African feminists’ agenda particularly in the youth environment is not the work of governments alone thus private sector is key stakeholder and that is how she founded MnM. This is an untold story of a creative and innovative African feminist. Her MnM project was featured in 2018  by Forbes among the top promising entrepreneurs in Africa. She states that day that, emphatically, she believes in youth capacity and ability to change the narratives of Africans now and in the future. And in realizing our potentials as African feminists, we must start giving credit and reignition to feminists of her type.

 

Oh, Jesus is Lord ! When?

 

The critical issue currently known as the COVID-19 pandemic, has indeed exposed Africans to many realities. It was 7 am GMT and I stir. My mind scanned the whole capital. I become sleepless. My brain races and the problem about the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana and in Africa cascaded through the three parts of my brain. Have we been weighed and found wanting as Africans? But I am optimistic that there will be few feminists within Africa and in the diaspora, who will stand up and become modern-day Moses, not only to be able to defeat this pandemic but to create a new Africa. As the pandemic hits Ghana, the President was making efforts to charter planes to bring N95 masks, ventilators and PPEs to our health professionals. There again I begun thinking of the gender dynamics among the health workers. It is obvious that women dominated and thus are exposed to the risk of infections. 

 

Hmm ... Accra, which in the lockdown was in a strange and eerie feeling of apocalypse. Where are the school children? The women selling doughnuts? The newspaper sellers, the beggars? Where is the youth particularly ladies selling everything from dog chain to chewing gum? The street supermarkets and malls are gone and substituted by police and army officers ensuring that people stay at home. At this point, I now know our economy is in a total mess because economic activities have been massively disrupted, hotels closed, industries tottering, airlines are grounded. I screamed and asked myself where is the continent going? Hmm, what must feminists in Africa do to prevent early pregnancy, domestic abuse and other vulnerabilities as schools and other social gatherings are paused? To be honest, there is a hump in my throat even right now when I think about feminists in Africa. I questioned the unbalance between attention to the pandemic and women sexual and reproductive health, I equally questioned the unbalance within the nature of the global architecture. These are grave times surpassing the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. There is the need for African feminists to arise to the peak and solicit for fund and re-advocate for gender balance. 

Indeed, the downfall of Africa and feminists in Africa is the joy of the civilizations. When I remembered what the people of Madagascar are saying about their discovery of vaccine for the pandemic and the World health Organization’s responses, I grieve. The people of Madagascar are saying that they have discovered something capable of dealing with the pandemic but the WHO is asking if it conforms with the protocols that have been prescribed? But the question is; who prescribed these protocols? It is pharmaceutical companies outside there? And why didn’t they perform the necessary researches on the Malagasy discovery but rather rejected it?

 

Feminists in Africa, from my perspective, are under-performing. We are punching below the waist. There is the sense in which we are not realizing our potentials and of course when we found ourselves in situations like this, we have no shortage of excuses. We are actors of our own misfortunes. There is a sense for which African feminists have demonstrated that we have no faith in ourselves. Our levels of esteems are such that, we doubt ourselves and our capabilities and even the things we ought to do, we do not do them, and thus the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed our weaknesses. When we examined our hospitals and clinics, we have found them wanting. The entire continent of Africa has few hospital facilities less than Germany, Spain, Italy, and South Korea. When Africa was hungry for face and nose masks, we cannot even make them in Africa and Jack Ma has to give us masks and it was only after that I discovered that I can personally make masks. No wonder Ali Mazrui in his African heritage says “Africa produces what it does not consume and consumes what it does not produce”. African women can not afford the luxury of engaging in perpetual lamentations. I think that African women can now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, recognize that; this is an opportunity to seize to showcase to the world that we have potentials. To conclude, I therefore, propose that as policymakers all over Africa take actions to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is paramount to consider gender dynamics in our communities. 

 

Dunyo Joyce is a Senior High School graduate  and women’s voices activist from Ghana. She is passionate about fighting for full-fledged equality and pursuant of reproductive and sexual freedom. Joyce is also an innovative and creative thinker and has the conviction of excelling in the entrepreneurial industry.

She considers herself as an intrinsically motivated young lady, naturally curios and obsessive note taker. She is very optimist about herself and others.