Feminist Advocacy in Africa: Voices and Actions

Abstract

Feminist advocacy and particularly African feminist advocacy has not been widely studied and documented. There is need for an exploration and interrogation of what the concept of Feminist Advocacy means in an African context and more broadly to document its rich history. Many feminist and women’s rights organisations as well as mainstream organisations use the concept with different explanations of why it is indeed Feminist Advocacy that includes defining approaches or in reference to the identities of organisations. Evidence shows us that advocacy in Africa is largely seen as Northern (Banerjee & Connell 2018), and donor driven (Wilson & Keyserling 2016). However, Southern Feminisms (including African feminism) have been key in stressing the importance of localised advocacy based on the “real needs” of women’s communities of the South, evident in the articles in this edition.