A New Kind of Dance: Book Launch Supported by AWDF

Thrown in at the deep end of the campaign process in Nigeria’s 2011 elections, Amina Salihu was without a “manual” on how to organise women or a campaign. This book is a narrative of the effort to bring years of civil society learning to bear on the field of practical politics. It takes a keen view of the role of family, the community, the changing role of women in politics and their growing awareness about the importance of that role. As the title indicates, it is a new kind of dance where, yes, women still dance but they dictate the tune, when to dance, what kind of dance and for whom.

We are excited to announce the launch event of the book, A New Kind of Dance, by our grantee partner, Habiba Dangana Foundation (HADIS), in Nigeria. The book is written by Amina Salihu, a development consultant with a well of knowledge and experience in building women’s political participation. The African Women’s Development Fund contributed $15,000 to the completion of this project.

Sarah Mukasa, AWDF’s Director of Programmes shares, “This publication charts the experiences of women in politics in Northern Nigeria. It makes a very useful contribution to our understanding of what works and what doesn’t and how women should be supported in electoral processes.”

A New Kind of Dance is the first of its kind written from the perspective of someone observing a campaign trail and organising women to be politically active. The uniqueness of this book is that no one had ever documented the multi-dimensional experiences of a woman on the campaign trail before. Salihu details stories as a spouse, a mobilizer and a campaign leader in Northern Nigeria. The book has also been translated into Hausa as Sabuwar Gada.

In 2011, AWDF supported a project to work with women’s business cooperatives in Kaduna state to increase awareness of and participation in the political arena. It became imperative to document and popularise the findings from that process and to produce new lessons for the future on how best to work with and support women.

As Rose Buabeng, Programme Officer for Anglophone Africa at AWDF details, “Women’s participation in global decision-making practices is a precursor for human development. Yet there are only a few women represented as leaders in political and economic sectors. In Nigeria, the national average for women in politics is 7%. Literature shows that in Nigeria, there are fewer women-led businesses compared to men. Women run only 20% of businesses in the formal sector, 13% of which are in the retail sector (World Bank 2009).”

With the release of this book, Salihu hopes to accomplish the following objectives:

Increase women’s qualitative participation in the 2015 elections
Strengthen the knowledge base of young girls and women across selected public schools
Mature the confidence of women whose work and voices are captured in the book
Create a richer awareness by making the book available for strategic distribution to partners and stakeholders.

Buabeng notes, “The publication and dissemination of lessons from A New Kind of Dance is important as an exercise to boost the confidence of women to comprehensively participate in politics. It’s useful as a tool to design projects that are responsive to the needs of women and that can enable politicians to enjoy support from women. Its importance is further underscored by the key lessons captured, which shows that women cooperatives must pay attention to politics if they are to achieve economic prosperity.”

The launch of A New Kind of Dance takes place at the Women’s Development Centre Central Area in Abuja on Wednesday, November 26th, 2014 at 10am prompt. The event is open to the public.

Thank you to the HADIS Foundation and author Amina Salihu for creating free e-book versions of A New Kind of Dance to share with women worldwide! ( English and Hausa versions). Hard copies of the book can also be purchased on Amazon.

The launch of A New Kind of Dance takes place at the Women’s Development Centre Central Area in Abuja on Wednesday, November 26th, 2014 at 10am prompt. The event is open to the public.

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