[Below is a speech delivered today by AWDF’s Interim CEO, Theo Sowa at an event held to welcome the musician and activist Nneka Egbuna as AWDF’s Ambassador for the Arts]

We are delighted to have you with us at AWDF this morning to welcome Nneka Egbuna in her role as AWDF’s Arts Ambassador.

AWDF was founded 11 years ago by three inspirational women – Hilda Tadria, Joanna Foster and Bisi Adeleye Fayemi, who was also AWDF’s founding Executive Director until last year. They created an amazing organisation aimed at supporting women organisations in their work to make real change in women’s lives – to ensure the recognition and implementation of ALL women’s human rights (economic, social, cultural, political etc) across our continent. And in partnership with the organisations we make grants to (some of whom are here today) AWDF has achieved some great milestones. AWDF does grant making, capacity building, advocacy and movement building. We have made over 19 million dollars in grants to more than 800 organisations in 42 African countries.

More importantly, we have been able to support some amazing stories of change – for example, the small group of women in Ghana who started baking loaves in a clay oven and have moved from that to setting up a modern bakery with new infrastructure – the profits from which have established a crèche and sponsored neighbourhood children through school; or the project in Ethiopia where on a site visit after a year, positive women who had previously been on the verge of death were transformed through effective treatment of HIV/AIDS, to the extent where they were strong and vibrant, able to afford to buy their own medications without disruptions to the timeline and support their children – all from the seed of a small grant which allowed them to earn and save money from decent, safe labour. Or the women’s shelter in Nigeria, where the women leveraged the money from AWDF to lobby local people and the local government – resulting in the first shelter for women victims of violence in that country, a place where women and their children could go to and be safe in the face of extreme violence. That group was so effective that the Governor of the state not only put money into the building of the shelter, but took on the torch of helping to get other shelters built in other parts of the country.

There are so many stories of change and each of the AWDF staff has different favourites. But one of the lessons learned during this time is that its not enough to change women’s lives project by project – or even policy by policy… That will take too long – and African women, our children and our communities deserve better – deserve change now!

And so AWDF’s Arts, Culture and Sports thematic area was born.

We have learned that it is not enough to talk about international conventions that promote women’s human rights; about international legislation that outlines national responsibilities for the wellbeing of children and communities; about international, regional and national policies that aim to do everything from eliminating poverty to protecting women from violence. These are important discussions to have and the drive to promote, recognise and realise women’s rights is central to the achievement of well being and inclusive development on our continent and throughout the world. Yet despite these laws, these tools, these policies we live in nations where girls continue to have unequal access to education; where women die giving birth at double, triple and quadruple the rates in countries on other continents; where our mothers, daughters and sisters lives are blighted by violence, and where redress and justice can seem distant dreams.

I think that too often our social, economic and political discussions miss a crucial element that is needed to engender true social change – and that is the human element. We can have the most powerful legislation throughout the world – yet if women don’t know about it, how can they use it to change their lives? Just as importantly, real change is not externally imposed. A wise, feminist mother and mentor once told me that true and sustainable change in any area has to be powered by individual, internal understandings and decisions that come together in collective action and movement. So change in our heads, in our hearts, in our beliefs and in our actions…

And the arts can be powerful catalysts of such individual and collective understandings. Artists can produce works that translate dusty words into clear and heartfelt understandings of issues and ways of dealing with them. Art can touch the souls as well as the minds of countless people, inspiring passion, anger, joy and other emotions that can catalyse action in ways that court cases and academic lectures and even protest marches may never achieve. Art can bring information and meaning into lives in ways that can be more real, more grounded and more influential than any number of texts. Arts – traditional or modern – are integral to our cultural lives… and changes in social, economic and political arenas will never truly take root without parallel changes in our cultural norms, beliefs and practices.

Please don’t think that I am saying that we can achieve social change and justice through art alone. We cannot. But we can and must leverage the transformational power of the arts if we are to achieve and to accelerate real social change.

And that is what our Arts, Culture and Sports programme seeks to do. We hope to use the power of the arts and culture to increase public support for women’s rights, to challenge the negative stereotypes of African women; to document women’s lives and contributions and create new, dynamic and more accurate narratives about African women; to raise the profiles of our amazing African women artists and to use arts and sports to mobilise new constituencies – especially of confident, passionate young women activists.

I have seen traumatised children respond and come to life in music workshops; have seen communities that have been fighting for years come together over games of football; have seen the power of film to touch people’s hearts and change their thinking; have experienced writers whose works have changed my life and motivations (including the wonderful Professor Ama Ata Aidoo who is with us today)…

Join us in using arts, culture and sport to accelerate and leverage the change we want to see.

Thank you.