Ngozi Iwere
Nigeria
I am a feminist because I believe in the full personhood of women.
I live in Lagos, Nigeria. For the past 35 years, I have been an activist
for social justice. I helped to build the radical student’s movement in the
country in the 1980s and I’m active in the pro-democracy and working class
struggles. I am the founding Director of Community Life Project (CLP), which is
a Non-Governmental organisation promoting participatory, holistic grassroots
development. We work on issues of health, livelihoods and governance. The
majority of our people are marginalised from the development and governance
processes and public policies and programmes don’t often serve their interest.
Through advocacy and training, we help government agencies become
more participatory and responsive. More importantly, we build the capacity
of grassroots people to take independent action to improve their quality of
life. We provide the knowledge and skills necessary for people to find their
voice and use it to make government more democratic and accountable. I
am a feminist because I believe in the full personhood of women. I am angry
that society allows women to be treated as second-class, subordinate beings.
I work from a women’s rights and human rights perspective.
The need to fundamentally improve the status and living conditions of the
majority of African women is the major challenge facing us as African feminists
today. While the work of women’s movements all over the world has resulted
in some gains for women everywhere, the majority of women in Africa still
lack access to education, healthcare, financial capital and land. As African
feminists we have to devise ways and means to positively transform this situation
over the next two decades. Secondly, our movement is still largely elitist and
dominated by those of us who have been privileged to receive good formal
education. It is most desirable to open the space a lot more for the participation
of young girls and to synergis