The power of digital activism for gender equality

Zimbabwean-based trust – The Girls Table is helping African women to be leaders in conversations surrounding the experiences they have been through and the change they want to see. Using various forms of media through her organisation, Founder and Executive Director Samkeliso Tshuma speaks about the importance of speaking up online.

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In many cases, one’s road to entrepreneurship can be due to economic factors such as unemployment and job insecurity. Or the opposite where non-circumstantial reasons like an individual’s desire to transform their creative ideas into tangible goods, or their love for learning and experiencing new things can cause them to take bold chances.

Entrepreneurship can be an innate ability that is instilled in someone from birth.

For as long as Samkeliso Tshuama can recall, she has always seen the world through an entrepreneurial lens.

In high school, she was already a self-employed worker, starting her own business in the field of importing goods.

“For my first-ever company, I used to purify water, package and brand it to sell to local supermarkets,” she tells us, “I also used to import maize and macaroni in Zimbabwe.”

This willpower to innovate and be proactive has also been a result of her surrounding environment growing up.

“In Zimbabwe not having formal employment is most of our story and so a lot of us go down the road of entrepreneurship but for me, I realise my parents instilled within me that spirit despite the situation of the country,“ Samkeliso explains, “My dad was a businessperson, and my mum still is a businessperson so for me it has always been part of my life.”

She adds: “My mum was always proactive and  being a kid, watching her, I modelled the way she was.”

After high school and university, the Zimbabwean interned at Moyo Africa and spent some time as a programme officer for the organisation: Wild, but she tells us, there was always something in her calling her to start things.

“For me, there have always been three core values that have provided meaning for everything I do,” the activist shares, “Its always been about empowerment, representation and inclusion, if I see areas of exclusion, my mind says let’s create something, let’s create our own tables and our own platforms, let’s be heard.”

One of the organisations the Zimbabwean businesswomen started which was a catalyst to the formation of The Girls Table was called Let’s Connect Zimbabwe.

“Being an entrepreneur from a young age meant that I made some mistakes and I knew that there were other young people like me in the same positions who needed information and advise,” Samkeliso states, “That is where Let’s Connect Zimbabwe came from.”

Seeing a need and a gap in the market where information on running businesses for young adults in Zimbabwe was limited she started the initiative in 2017 by facilitating workshops on digital marketing, loan applications and proposal writing.

“Sometimes I would also look for facilitators which is how the connect aspect from the name links to the work we do,” she states, “I knew this was an area that was difficult to find and usually expensive for young people so I made sure everything we provided them was free and useful to their interests.”

Whilst running Let’s Connect, the trainer got to network with Zenzele Ndebele, a Bulawayo-based journalist and fellow entrepreneur through a friend of hers.

“My friend and I had been talking about the different challenges young girls and women navigate through one day,” she shares, “they saw how passionate I was about these matters and encouraged me to share it with the Zenzele.”

An appointment with the journalist was made and Samkeliso met with the journalist.

“As we were talking, he told me that I had a voice, that he could feel my emotion and passion for women’s rights,” she shares, “ He said one day we should do a show for people to see someone like me speaking but I initially told him no and we left it at that.”

At the time, the entrepreneur didn’t feel comfortable with the idea, she couldn’t see herself being in the spotlight.

“I am not a camera person as I suffer from anxiety,” she explains, “but when it comes to taking initiative behind the scenes, that is where I thrive.”

In 2018 the conversation that had just been an idea resurfaced and became the launch of a show aimed at women in Zimbabwe called TheTable Girls.

Samkeliso’s drive to speak and share the lived experiences of women had not died as she could see the inequalities women were still facing.

Determined to see a way to change the narrative with support from Zenzele, she devised a solution for her involvement in the show and agreed to make it happen.

“I knew a friend of mine who was on the radio that shared the same passion as I did about women’s rights and empowerment called Hlengiwe Mtetwa, ” she recalls, “I told Zenzele that she is the one I need to do the show and everything else I will do.”

Both Zenzele and Helengiwe agreed and as a team of three, backed by production assistants, they began to host weekly episodes of the new online talk show. Each episode featured girl and women guests that spoke about issues ranging from gender-based violence, gender equality, teenage pregnancy, and women in leadership and politics.

Viewers could watch the show via Zenzele’s organisation called The Centre for Innovation & Technology online on Facebook and YouTube.

“The talk show was a brilliant way for us to talk to other women about the issues happening within the community from our perspectives,” Samkeliso expresses, “and the response we got was incredible, we could see the effects it was making already and I didn’t want to end it there.”

Envisioning a bigger picture for the Girls Table where more conversations could happen on an interactive level through events and workshops to empower more women, the co-founders Samkeliso and Helengiwe decided to register The Girls Table as a trust in 2020.

“I had done work for girls and women or young women before,” the entrepreneur shares, “and I knew that I needed to bring all these elements together to help women and young girls in Zimbabwe.”

Now at four years old, the trust has a website, digital platforms and multiple programmes running online and offline for women in the country to be part of.

“We have a magazine where young women that are not journalists can write articles,”  Samkeliso tells us, “To teach them we host workshops training them on how to use writing as a way to speak up.”

One of the programmes the trust also launched this year in May is the – Young Women Electoral and Participation project (YWEEP) which looks at championing young women’s participation and engagement in electoral processes through women-friendly platforms.

“Social media now allows people to participate in civic issues, democratic processes, so we want to show that we can speak up, that young woman have the right to register to vote,” the passionate activist expresses.

Gender and women’s rights expert Rodney Mutombo who Is also the founder of Women Excel Trust in Zimbabwe explains the importance of including males in these conversations too: “Men cannot walk a mile in women’s shoes, but they can walk a mile by a woman’s side to begin understanding the different challenges they encounter.”

Through his organisation which also shares a similar goal as The Girls Table which is to amplify women’s voices, he ensures that cultural issues that continue to perpetuate gender inequalities are shared conversations between all genders.

“It can be challenging to try and reappropriate cultural norms or ideals that have been cemented in men from the age of one-year-old to someone who is now 40 years old but we believe in speaking up together,” the male engagement specialist states, “We bring women and men in the same room so that women can share their concerns and men can respond and join them as allies advocating for women to have the spaces they deserve.”

As Samkeliso and Rodney work in the same space and share the same fight for women’s rights they have also become teammates, sharing support for one another’s initiatives offline and online.

Samkeliso believes every sector has space for new avenues and discussions to take place: “Right now I am trying to learn how young women can advocate for the economy price when it comes to economic rights which is also a way for me to mix my degree in economics with the advocacy work I do.”

With her background in entrepreneurship, the activist is always cooking up ways to see progress in human rights and equality.

While most identify business-minded people as money makers, Samkeliso is an example of a change maker.

“In the next two years, I would love to The Girls Table as a leading platform amplifying the voices of girls and young women on a national scale,” the executive director declares, “Right now we’re restricted to material and a few districts, but our vision is to be a multinational organisation that also reaches regional spaces.”

She continues: “We want to be part of conversations around achieving  inclusion and representation of women in media on mainstream and alternative media channels.”

Within creating change and building these conversations online and in person the team at The Girls Table also like to play a role in policymaking.

“Another benefit to the digital economy is that it is also enabling people like us to get involved in policy issues related to gender equality,” Samkeliso tells AWiM, “We have started to produce research on gender and hope when we are finished that we will have well-researched evidence that we can take to those spaces for equal change to be implemented.”

With her entrepreneurial mindset, the activist also recognises her role at The Girls Table won’t be hers forever: “I look forward to seeing the future young women of Zimbabwe take lead and continue the work we have started, I know they will have fresh new ideas and approaches that will be proactive tools for women’s empowerment and development for generations to come.”

The digital space has been a vital catalyst for more girls’ and women’s voices to be heard and elevated. There is power in digital activism and speaking up but a key takeaway from Samkeliso’s journey is that community must have a place in the activism you do.

A community of women and men believing in a future of inclusion is growing in Zimbabwe and shall hopefully be a pattern of change across Africa.

This article is part of the African Women in Media (AWIM) Graduate Trainee Programme in collaboration with Fojo Media Institute