Year: 2020
Solidarity in Word and Deed: Translating the African Feminist Charter
Solidarity in Word and Deed: Translating the African Feminist Charter
Author: Jessica Horn, AWDF Director of Programmes
It may seem odd to be excited about a publication. However the story of the translation of the Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists begs recounting as a tale of inspired collective action.
The Charter itself was developed by the African Feminist Forum Working Group in 2006 and adopted in by over 100 African feminists at the first African Feminist Forum (AFF) hosted by AWDF in Accra that year. The goal was political clarity. Every movement needs to articulate its visions of ethics and collective power-and its political bottom lines. The Charter provided this, and has been used since as a means of bringing feminist activists across generations together to build feminist consciousness, create new feminist spaces and even to help unite women mobilising against religious fundamentalism.
As beautiful as it is, the Charter was written in English- a language spoken by some but not all of Africa’s people. Translating the Charter was imperative. However as is typical in the world of women’s organising, the AFF faced the challenge of funding. What we had not anticipated was the spontaneous action and love that we would receive in the form of voluntary translation by African activists so moved by the Charter that they saw it necessary to make sure the people they organised alongside could read it too.
In its first incarnation, Beninoise feminist and AWDF staff member Rissi Asani-Alabi translated the Charter into French for use in the bilingual AFF regional forums and to aid the creation of national Feminist Forums in Francophone African countries. Using this, Senegalese feminists Fatim Faye and Kura Saar went on to translate the Charter into Wolof, a language spoken widely in Senegal and Gambia. In the revised version additional translation support was offered by Pathé Diagne, one of Africa’s leading linguists and political scientists (who has, notably, also translated the Quran into Wolof).
In Tanzania, staff of the country’s leading women’s rights organisation Tanzania Gender Networking Programme translated the Charter into Kiswahili, opening up readership in Central and East Africa and offering feminist discourse in Kiswahili including the term feminism itself and a translation of the concept of ‘patriarchy’ (mfumo dume).
And the feminist love has continued to flow.
On reading the Charter for the first time, Egyptian women’s human rights defender Yara Salaam offered, in typical generous style, to translate the text into Arabic. Her father, poet and translator Refaat Sallam provided proofreading support, making the Charter accessible now to Arabic-speaking feminists across north and northeast Africa and to African feminists in Arabic speaking diasporas.
After returning from the 4th African Feminist Forum in Zimbabwe in early 2016, Angolan feminists Sizaltina Cutaia and Âurea Mouzinho were inspired to revive feminist organising by creating the Ondjango Feminista in their home country. Their first step, working with Florita Telo, was to translate the Charter into Portuguese to allow women in Angola to read and rekindle feminist activism. Through this solidarity, Portuguese translations of the Charters are already in the hands of feminist activists in Angola, Mozambique and Brazil- including with two of Brazil’s ground-breaking women capoeira masters.
This year we have worked with East African feminist graphic designer Lulu Kitololo to create a stunning new redesign of the Charter, producing versions in all of the languages available thus far. For Latin script we used title fonts created by The League of Moveable Type, a self-named leader in the open source font revolution, offering highly designed free fonts. In Arabic, Yara Salaam suggested use of the Amiri font- an open source font project design to revive and digitise an older Arabic typeface.
We often think of solidarity as large public displays. However there is solidarity in these quieter acts of resourcing a movement through knowledge, skills and time. Feminism is not just in the saying, it is in the doing. The process of redesigning and translating the Charter of Feminist Principles has proved that.
Our heartfelt thank you goes to everyone who has participated in making the Charter relevant and accessible to the widest possible audience. We hope you find the new materials useful. And as always, do let us know how you are using them
Download the charter for free:
Envisioning a Feminist Earth: African women lead the way
Envisioning a Feminist Earth: African women lead the way
A feminist just earth, as expressed by Bridget Burns of WEDO, ‘is a world centred on recognition and care for ourselves, for others and for mother earth’.
As COVID-19 continues to impact our communities, it is imperative that we actively and consciously devise ways of protecting the health of our planet. The environmental challenges before us today are prompting us to view our development through an environmental health lens. They also highlight the fact that we need to change the way we live, work, relate to one another and interact with the outside world. It is clear that our current development model is unsustainable, and is taking a heavy toll on the earth and her lifeforms. If we continue to take our natural environment for granted and continue to produce, consume and power our lives the way we do now, forests, oceans and weather systems soon will be overwhelmed and rendered incapable of supporting life as we know it.
The lives of the majority of African women, especially rural poor women are closely connected to the environment as a result of their livelihoods being largely dependent on natural resources. In cognisance of this, feminists and women’s rights organisations in Africa have undertaken various innovative and community driven interventions to forestall unsustainable agriculture, fisheries, infrastructure projects, mining and energy. All of these have resulted in unprecedented biodiversity loss, habitat degradation, over-exploitation, pollution and climate change which have negatively affected the livelihoods of rural women.
AWDF is a strong advocate of sustainable livelihoods through women’s innovation and local response and has supported several women-driven local initiatives to address environmental degradation.
CAEPA Cameroon, with support from AWDF, galvanised over 1000 rural women within 6 communities in Bamenda to re-vegetate marginal lands through agro-forestry systems with fast growing tree species. The wood lots serve to enrich soil cover, ameliorate local climate, provide fodder for livestock and energy for cooking. CAEPA Cameroon has also mobilised about 1500 young environmental feminists in 6 schools within Bamenda to join in the re-vegetation drive. As a result, the schools have incorporated re-afforestation in extra curriculum activities and have re-vegetated about 200 hectares of marginal land within their respective communities.
Another partner, Iseguri Initiative in the Oti Region of Ghana has supported rural women smallholder farmers in organic agriculture and agroforestry practices. Over 2000 rural women smallholder farmers have adopted such practices to improve their farming activities, boost their income and rejuvenate marginal land for farming.
African Gender and Extractives Alliance (WoMin) worked tirelessly to strengthen the voices of marginalised women in resource rich communities to advocate against extractives and large-scale infrastructure projects.
African women have always played a critical role in managing natural resources, and are also the most affected by environmental degradation. As a feminist organisation, AWDF believes in the power of solidarity to radically transform our world into a feminist earth. Environmental issues are feminist issues and must be prioritised by all.
Happy Earth Week!
By Rose Buabeng, Programme Officer, AWDF
22/04/2020
Dinnah NABWIRE -Knowledge Management Specialist
Dinnah NABWIRE -Knowledge Management Specialist
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Dinnah Nabwire is responsible for steering institutional initiatives to generate, analyse and utilise knowledge to shape sustainable feminist philanthropy in Africa.
For 10 years, Dinnah has led research, documentation, learning, policy and advocacy for nonprofits with placements in Uganda and Washington DC. Most recently, she led technical collaborations for the research to practice transition of the Uganda Ministry of Gender-led Violence Against Children Survey (VACS). She also managed the establishment of a community-led model learning site in Northern Uganda which was co-created from the VACS data, a corroborative formative qualitative study and lessons from implementing the national INSPIRE strategies’ pilot in Central Uganda.
Dinnah holds a Masters of Gender, Education and International Development from the University College London and a Bachelors’ of Social Work from the Uganda Christian University.
She is a prochoice feminist, passionate about sexual and reproductive health rights for women. She is an everyday Rotarian, a lover of art and a walker.
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Dinnah Nabwire est chargée de piloter les initiatives institutionnelles visant à générer, analyser et utiliser les connaissances pour façonner la philanthropie féministe durable en Afrique.
Depuis 10 ans, Dinnah a mené des études, de la documentation, de l’apprentissage, des politiques et des actions de plaidoyer pour des organisations à but non lucratif en Ouganda et à Washington DC.
Plus récemment, elle a dirigé des collaborations techniques pour la recherche sur la transition de l’enquête sur la violence contre les enfants (VACS), menée par le ministère ougandais de l’égalité des sexes. Fondé sur les données VACS, une étude qualitative formative corroborante et les leçons tirées de la mise en œuvre du projet pilote de stratégies nationales INSPIRE dans le centre de l’Ouganda, elle a également géré la mise en place d’un site d’apprentissage modèle dirigé par la communauté dans le nord de l’Ouganda.
Dinnah est titulaire d’une maîtrise en genre, éducation et développement international de l’University College London et d’une licence en travail social de l’Université chrétienne d’Ouganda. Féministe pro-choix, elle se passionne pour les droits des femmes en matière de santé sexuelle et reproductive. Elle est une Rotarienne active, une amoureuse de l’art et une marcheuse.
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