Jeshurun's Mind: My Musings

The Bold, Strong and Indomitable African Woman

          Being born and bred in Africa poses a myriad of serious challenges to the African woman as compared to her male counterpart. Some of the hurdles she encounters during her lifetime normally threaten her very own existence. Since her world is never cloistered right from when she is little, she quickly gets inured to the harsh conditions and realities of life. She is counted extremely lucky if she does not succumb to the primary killers of children in Africa, namely pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition. The causal relationship between poverty and disease is one of the contributory factors to the inexorable rise in child mortality. 

          It is one of the reasons why the African child's susceptibility to disease remains more or less the same, despite the concerted effort made by both international and local organizations as well as health sector's stakeholders to curb the situation. Pneumonia, a deadly Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) kills more children than any other infectious disease. At the same time, the measles death toll in Africa is so high that in some parts, it is reported many mothers do not give their children real names until they have survived the disease. But as fate would have it, some of those who survive the killer diseases suffer blindness, deafness, brain damage or total paralysis.

          Once her vulnerability to childhood illnesses is over, the little girl is enrolled in school so she can get basic education, supposedly of good quality, and become an important person in society later on in her life. However, due to many reasons ranging from economic to cultural practices, keeping her consistently in school becomes a tall order. Some retrogressive cultural practices and rites of passage restrict her freedom to enjoy the right to education. This is common especially in Sub Saharan Africa, a region that lags behind the rest of the world in terms of education provision, with majority of out of school children being girls. This is unsurprising considering the ordeals girls face of pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, being married off at a tender age and domestic work, not to mention traumatizing experiences with predatory paedophile members of society. 

          A case example of the whole scenario can be derived from South Africa whereby the country's Health Minister revealed, two months ago, that at least 28 per cent of school girls were HIV positive compared with 4 per cent of boys. The Minister, Mr Aaron Motsoaledi, attributed the problem to sugar daddies who exploited the girls, adding that 94,000 school girls, some aged between 10 and 14, fell pregnant in 2011, and 77,000 had abortions at state facilities. But thanks to various interventions from different stakeholders, the life of the African girl child may no longer be at stake as it has been the case in the past.

For instance, the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) has committed to facilitate girls who face numerous obstacles in their development towards academic and social achievement, to better understand those obstacles and identify their solutions. One of the practices FAWE has adapted is the TUSEME (Let's speak out) project that roots for girls' empowerment. TUSEME aims at addressing problems such as school dropouts, poor academic achievement, school girls' pregnancy and sexual harassment among others. 

          But regardless of whether she is empowered academically, economically and socially or not, life goes on for the African girl child who, with or without her consciousness, gradually turns into a young woman. If she is not already a mother by this time, she, out of her own volition or otherwise, becomes one as she grows older. Even though the fruit of the womb is regarded as a bundle of joy, becoming a mother in Africa entails risking one's life as well as that of the child. Africa is highlighted as the most dangerous continent to be a mother of a newborn, because of the high maternal and infant mortality.

According to the Save the Children's 2013 State of the World's Mothers report, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the riskiest country to be a new mother. In some cases when the mother is poorly fed and overworked, she gives birth to underweight babies who have not been adequately nourished in the womb. Due to the devastating conditions for mothers and children, the African mother has one in thirty chances of dying as a result. Sadly, the grim situation does not take into account whether she is a single mother, a refugee, in a stable marriage or has a steady income among other things.

          That notwithstanding, the African woman still remains the backbone of communities and the continent’s greatest potential to unlocking economic growth as she provides the majority of labour with the least amount of resources. The U.S Department of State, through the African Women's Entrepreneurship Program (AWEP) strongly believes that reductions in the gender gap in education, health, political participation, and economic inclusion will result in the continent's economic competitiveness. The AWEP initiative, which was launched almost three years ago identifies and builds networks of women entrepreneurs across sub-Saharan Africa poised to transform their societies by owning, running, and operating small and medium businesses, and by becoming voices for social advocacy in their communities. 

          Despite the rendition of vicissitudes that inform her formative years, the African woman has proved that intellectual propensity and physical prowess are really individual attributes and have nothing to do with one's sex. She has surmounted various levels of difficulties to become among other things a formidable author, scientist, politician, engineer, journalist and business woman. Presently, the African woman scientist as well as the small scale woman farmer holds the key to food security in the continent. Speaking recently at a ceremony where 70 African women were awarded fellowships to accelerate agricultural gains by strengthening their research and leadership skills, Vicki Wilde, the Founder and Director of the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), noted that majority of those who produce, process and market Africa's food are women, but only one in agricultural researchers is female. 

          A research conducted by AWARD found out that if women were highly represented in Agriculture, there could be plenty of food for families and surplus for sale, hence assurance of food in the continent. The 70 laureates were selected from among an impressive cadre of 1,094 applicants from 11 African countries and included among others Nigeria's Dr Bolanle Otegbayo who holds a PhD in Food Technology from the University of Ibadan, Kenya's Dr Lusike Wasilwa, an Assistant Director, Horticulture and Industrial Crops Division at Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and Dr Segenet Kelenu, the current Vice President of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

          It is therefore only appropriate to state that life has turned the African woman into an indomitable spirit.  She has undoubtedly lived the adage that what a man can do a woman can do too, and even do it better. Hard-lined chauvinists who seek to suppress women and pin them down to play second fiddle have been vanquished. It is hard, nowadays, to find an African woman who is not making it in one field or another. 

       Currently, we have African women presidents such as Malawi's Joyce Banda and Liberia's Ellen Johnson. We also have ministers, ambassadors, judges and holders of extremely powerful positions across the political, economic and social divide. Not long ago, the Forbes Magazine released a list of 20 youngest power women in Africa, all under 45, who wield enormous influence in African business, technology, policy and media. They were rated to be at the vanguard of Africa's imminent socio-economic revolution and its contemporary renaissance. 

          Some of them included Ory Okolloh, a Harvard-trained Kenyan lawyer and founder of Ushahidi, Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian writer, Yolanda Cuba, a South African corporate executive, Ndidi Nwuneli, a Nigerian social entrepreneur, Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist, Khanyi Ndhlomo, a South African media mogul and Elsie Kanza, Economic Advisor to Tanzania's president. Others were Juliet Ehimuan, the Nigeria's Google country manager, Isis Nyongo, a Kenyan and the Managing Director of  InMobi Africa, the world's largest independent mobile advertising network, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, an Ethiopian-born entrepreneur who earlier on had been named 'African Businesswoman of the Year' by African Business Magazine, and Liberia's Sarah Kaba Jones, the founder of FACE Africa, a non-for-profit organization that provides access to clean, safe and portable drinking water for rural communities in Liberia.

Of course the list was not exhaustive and this just shows how successful the African woman has been and can be, if ways of enhancing her well being, abilities, natural gifts and talents are given top priority.