Rhoda Michael from the Mwanza Region of Tanzania, was 16-year-old when her parents decided she was old enough to be married. They pulled her from school when she was in Form Three and took her to an older man. Her marriage lasted for three months only, and she fled after her father died in a…
Kano Gently, Yasmin peddles the sewing machine to finish up a maternity gown earlier started by her tutor. Her mind gushes through thoughts of the hard times that Covid-19 has placed her mother’s business, lowering it to its barest minimum and her inability to write Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) exams due to technical…
Lusaka In the backyard of a small brown-bricked unfinished structure in the Kashima area of Mufumbwe, a rural district in North-Western Province, Zambia, is a group of women with different colourful Chitenges (wrappers) tied around their waists. Some are bending, while others are seated on a small bench, with their hands rigorously making dough out…
Bamenda It is yet another quiet Monday afternoon in Bamenda with not a single motorcycle or car cruising the streets as has been the case for the past 6 years because of the ongoing Anglophone Crisis. The familiar silence of this day is regularly interrupted by the buzzing house flies flapping their wings over the…
Dar es Salaam It is a Tuesday morning when I arrive at Miyuyu village in Newala District, Mtwara Region located in the southeastern part of Tanzania. People seem busy with the preparations for the day ahead. The women food vendors are preparing breakfast using improved cookstoves and some young men are cleaning their makeshift hair…
Kampala Lydia Aseru* narrates in tears how women are often raped by cattle herders in the forest while collecting firewood for cooking and sale. Women’s fuel wood collection and deforestation, especially in West Nile districts hosting refugees have not only affected the environment but also led to an increase in cases of Gender-Based Violence. Ms…
Nairobi A group of women and youths came up with a biogas initiative to tackle indoor pollution and sanitation in Nairobi’s Kibra Slums. They also use it as an alternative fuel to cook.
Gaborone It’s a hot sunny day in the village of Habu, situated between Shakawe and Okavango, the biggest tourist attraction of Botswana, and Theresa Sethelo makes her way towards the settlement, balancing a bunch of firewood on her head. She has draped the wood with an old cloth and she gestures to pull it tighter,…
Banjul The sky looked misty and cloudy on a sunny day just like the rain was going to fall, an obnoxious smell filled the air around the famous Gambia Mall in the capital Banjul. An adjacent street led straight to the dumpsite. Suddenly, there was a thick cloud of smoke which forced many women vendors…
Lusaka As the ravages of COVID-19 swept across the globe like wildfire, the killer virus did not only claim millions of human lives but also ended people’s jobs. Before the onset of the pandemic, 34-year-old Hamilambo Abriella had a well-paying job in the national park from which she fed her two children. But when the…
Cape Town Cape Town is one of the world’s most unique tourist attractions, filled with warm skies, sea breeze and sandy picnics and of course the Table Mountain. Only a few years ago, its blue economy was affected by the harsh realities of climate change, altering how South African women gain access to water. Women…
Addis Ababa Mebrat Bekele, 80, recounts with nostalgia how her former kebele (village), now an abandoned pile of stones and rubble, was neatly nestled between a small seasonal river and the lush, hilly grasslands. Mebrat has lived all her life in the Halega micro watershed in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ (SNNP) region. She…
