Our Africa - a changing continent through women's eyes

While policy frameworks lay out a broad-brush vision for equality, justice and prosperity in the African region, OUR AFRICA engages the detail. With its ear to the ground, the platform profiles fresh thinking, critical analysis and activist initiatives by African women in response to the many forces shaping Africa’s present and future

Hope, pain and patience: HIV and sex workers

A year after the UN adopted a declaration in which member states committed to creating “enabling legal, social and policy frameworks in each national context …to eliminate stigma, discrimination and violence related to HIV” . Nada Mustafa Ali reports on the situation in South Sudan

Women in #SudanRevolts: heritage of civil resistance

For the last month, #SudanRevolt has gripped Sudan. Last Friday, the protests brought the central role of women in the civil resistance to the fore. Heather McRobie speaks to Rawa Gafar Bakhit, representing Sudan Change Now.

Accepted mishaps? Faith healing, HIV and AIDS responses

As the 2012 International AIDS Conference gathers to review “the science”, Jessica Horn examines the powerful role of faith-healing in African communities affected by HIV and AIDS, and asks why there is still so little policy and activist action on the issue.

Burundi at 50: towards a governance of peace

As Burundi celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its declaration of independence, the landscape is bleak: impunity, insecurity and extra judicial killings of members of the opposition. One of the biggest obstacles to reconciliation is the lack of truth over the country’s history, says Lyduine Ruronona

50 Ans d’indépendance au Burundi: envers une gouvernance pour la paix

A l’heure ou le Burundi  s'apprête à célébrer les cinquante ans de proclamation d’indépendance le tableau est sombre : l’impunité, l’insécurité et les exécutions extrajudiciaires  des  membres des partis politiques de l’opposition. Parmi les grands obstacles à la réconciliation, il y a le manque de vérité sur l’histoire du pays, dit Lyduine Ruronona.

Are women occupying new movements?

The women's movement must argue against a de-historicized understanding of new social movements in the African region, profiling examples of women’s active participation and leadership and situating these movements in the history of African people’s struggles for building alternative world orders, says Hakima Abbas.

Disquiet and despair: the gender sub-texts of the 'Arab spring'

The extreme precariousness of women’s rights in post- Arab spring successor regimes can neither be fully accounted for with reference to the rise of politically empowered Islamist parties nor attributed to some unqualified notion of misogyny, but is determined by a complex combination of internal and external influences.

Entrepreneurs of the revolution: jockeying for livelihood and security in post-Arab Spring Cairo

In the context of lax policing in the aftermath of the Arab spring, Cairo’s affluent neighbourhoods have seen the incursion of new ‘street entrepreneurs ’ from the city’s poorer areas and outskirts. Educated, business-savvy and fleet of foot, they articulate a new sense of entitlement that blends Tahrir Square’s calls for change with the ‘moral economy’ rhetoric of Nasser’s original revolution

Mutilating bodies: the Muslim Brotherhood’s gift to Egyptian women

In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood have offered to circumcise women for a nominal fee as part of their community services, a move that threatens to reverse decades of local struggle against the harmful practice argues Mariz Tadros

Rwandan refugees face no choice but repatriation

The UNHCR admits that that refugees fleeing Rwanda after 1998 still may have a well-founded fear of persecution, so what lies behind its decision to invoke the Cessation Clause?

Post conflict reconstruction: ask the women farmers

Twenty years of conflict has destroyed the social fabric of Casamance. The only way to re-instate security and eradicate famine in an area once known as the bread-basket of Senegal is to ask the women farmers, says Tabara Ndiaye

La reconstruction post-conflit: il faut demander aux agricultrices

Vingt ans de conflit ont détruit le tissu social en Casamance. Le seul mode de rétablir la sécurité et d’éradiquer la famine dans une zone qui fut considérée autrefois comme le grenier du Sénégal c’est de demander aux agricultrices, dit Tabara Ndiaye

Senegal: the land belongs to those who work it

After a quarter century of armed conflict, and a socio-economic fabric reduced to shreds, women in Casamance, Senegal, are winning the right to access land and rebuild peace, says Fatou Guèye

Sénégal: la terre à ceux qui la travaillent

Plus d’un quart de siècle de conflit armé, un tissu socio-économique complètement déstructuré, mais les femmes de Casamance restent debout, luttent avec succès pour avoir le droit à la terre et pour la pour la paix et le développement, dit Fatou Guèye

Crisis in Mali: fundamentalism, women's rights and cultural resistance

In conversation with Jessica Horn, a leading Malian women’s rights activist identifies the roots of the crisis in Mali, and the opportunistic use of the crisis by Malian and international Islamic fundamentalists to gain a popular foothold in the north of the country

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Our Africa is edited by Jane Gabriel and Jessica Horn.

If you would like to submit an article please email us.

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