The wonder women of Africa

Bogaletch Gebre: An end to female genital mutilation
Small, perfectly symmetrical thatched huts stand dotted among orderly plantations of false banana and mango trees in the Kembatta region of southern Ethiopia. More than 30 years ago, in one of these huts, a small girl called Bogaletch Gebre lay screaming while an elderly woman cut away her entire clitoris and labia, without anesthetic, to ensure she'd be marriageable. When the wound closed, Boge was left with only a small hole through which to urinate.

Female genital mutilation (FGM), common to numerous countries throughout Africa and the Middle East, including Somalia, Kenya, Yemen and Sudan, is centuries old and is believed to make women clean and docile. But in reality, some girls bleed to death and many die in childbirth because their vaginal opening is too small and scarred to allow a baby to be born.

Initiating change
The first girl in her community to study past Grade 4, Boge walked nearly 10 kilometres a day to primary school. She secured scholarships to complete high school, then degrees in Jerusalem and the United States. When she returned home, Boge did something even more extraordinary: she transformed her country's culture. Thanks to a powerful social movement she initiated to change attitudes toward the place of women in society, FGM is no longer performed in seven southern Ethiopian districts.

"Having seen and experienced what I did," says Boge, "and then having the chance through education to escape the backbreaking, spirit-crushing situation of women — if I had not tried to free women from this burden there would be something wrong with me. If one grows up in those conditions, one is challenged to do something about it."

Looking at female genital mutilation from a new perspective
Overturning a deeply ingrained cultural practice would seem an impossible task. But Boge is actually succeeding. Education and constant discussion are her keys. "I first discussed what had been done to me with an American friend. She was horrified, but I defended the practice, asking how she dare to question a sacred part of our culture. But she encouraged me to read books about women's natural right to be equal with men.

"I had a vision," explains Boge, "to help one girl be spared what I had gone through." In 1999 she started a self-help movement for women in her home district of Kembatta. The group receives funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) via Oxfam Canada. The Kembatta Mentti Gezzima-Tope (KMG) centre trains women who have undergone FGM to be health workers, peer educators, legal advisers and HIV experts. They talk about the dangers of FGM all over Ethiopia.

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Amarch Maniso had her clitoris and labia removed with a razor. Two days later, elders ran chicken feathers over the wound (a traditional practice). When the feathers caught slightly, they recalled the circumciser to redo the cuts.

As a result of infection, Amarch's body began to swell; she could barely urinate. She lost three children in childbirth, although her fourth daughter, born by caesarean section, survived. "Because of what happened to me, I am now able to tell communities the dangers of the practice," she says. "I have worked for KMG since it was first started as an advocate, and people listen to my story. Many have had similar experiences and can therefore relate to what I am saying."

he power of education and encouragement
In the 10 years since Boge laid the cornerstone of the KMG centre in Kembatta, the percentage of girls in the region subjected to genital mutilation has fallen from nearly 100 per cent to as low as three per cent. As a direct result of her educational work, marriage by abduction has also almost disappeared, and HIV-AIDS and domestic violence are no longer the taboo subjects they used to be. And at a ground-breaking event Boge organized in 2004, nearly 100,000 people turned out to celebrate "Whole body health life — Freedom from FGM" and the more than 35,000 girls who have publicly refused to be cut.

"This moment," says Boge, "was the community's affirmation that they no longer wanted to harm their children."

Support for local awareness from an international organization
In 2006, CIDA paid for a KMG training week and funded publicity for a major awareness-raising celebration. Boge is hopeful that CIDA's support will continue, especially as KMG expands. Forestry projects, rural health care, adult literacy and training sessions to provide former circumcisers with new employable skills are all part of KMG's work.

On a roadside in Kembatta, men and women tend to hundreds of small trees in a soil erosion prevention project. Elsewhere, community discussions are held on everything from FGM to better farming techniques.

A health centre also provides post- and prenatal care for women who have trouble giving birth after FGM, and carries out reconstructive surgery. "Many women have been thrown out by their husbands because they have been unable to penetrate them," says Boge. "This simple operation means women are being accepted back by their husbands and can now lead a normal life."

Like KMG's activities, Boge's dreams are expanding. "I have come to realize that this movement will not end until all violence against women is both acknowledged and stopped," she says. "Women are the threads that hold both families and communities together."

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Hafsat Abiola: vision of democracy
When Hafsat Abiola was 19, her father, Chief Moshood Abiola, was elected president of Nigeria. But just days after the election, the outgoing military junta declared the results void, and within a year they'd thrown Chief Abiola in prison.

Hafsat's mother, Kudirat Abiola, who was already an outspoken political and business figure in her own right, campaigned tirelessly to have her husband freed and democracy restored — until she was brutally murdered by the junta in 1996. Chief Abiola died in prison two years later.

Hafsat and her four brothers and two sisters were forced into exile in the U.S., where she was already a university student. While she finished her degree, she also worked as a volunteer for the Nigerian prodemocracy movement and demonstrated outside the White House against American oil companies, whose revenue payments to Nigeria were the military leaders' main incentive to remain in power.

I wanted to send out a defiant message to the military, saying: 'You can kill the woman, but not her dream of a free, democratic Nigeria,'" says Hafsat.

From dictatorships to democracy
Nigeria was one of 20 African countries to have been ruled by military dictatorships since most of the continent gained independence in the 1960s. Chief Abiola's short-lived victory had been in the country's first-ever election. It wasn't until a new military leader took over in 1998 that another round of elections was held, and that time honoured. Hafsat, then 25, came home with a vision.

"I realized that to truly honour my mother's dream I had to provide a bridge that would enable women to cross from being society's silenced to being its vital voice for change," she explains. "I set up the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND) in memory of my mother to give Nigerian women the leadership skills necessary to run for political office."

Women, she says, ensure that politics stay relevant. "Women bring to the table issues that concern families, like health care and education."

Ensuring the female voice is heard
The abysmally low status of women throughout Nigeria is one of many challenges. Forty per cent of women are illiterate, and few retain salaried jobs. Girls are expected to marry young, and Christian and Islamic leaders alike preach that women should be subservient to their husbands and fathers.

But today, in a classroom on a dusty university campus outside Lagos, 50 young women listen attentively to a speaker. The five-day seminar is part of KIND's Kudra Young Women Leadership Programme and includes workshops in leadership skills, business ideals and sexual health care.

Funimola Akinnouga, a self-assured 21-year-old studying for a degree in finance, says, "At secondary school, my classmates told me I couldn't run for class captain because it was a male job. That experience made me want to succeed as a woman even more. This course is the first time I have been made aware that I have the potential to do that."

Campaigning for female representation in government
KIND's Thirty by Eleven Campaign was established in 2006 and received money from CIDA under its Gender Equality Support pilot project. The campaign aims to help women win 30 per cent of political and decision-making positions in the 2011 elections. Currently, they hold only six per cent. "This is what we urgently need to change," says Hafsat. "We aim to make young women feel they have a right to a voice."

Princess Rotimi Beyioku — an apt name for a woman who exudes such a sense of power — is one of the 3,000 women who have so far been supported by KIND. She cuts a colourful figure as she walks through a bustling market in a suburb of Lagos, handing out flyers (printed with financial support from KIND), promoting herself as a chairmanship aspirant in the next local election. Stallholders selling everything from tomatoes to bike parts turn their heads. Women in politics are still an unusual sight in Nigeria.

"I want to change the way my community is," says Princess. "I am tired of politicians making empty promises. Our country is rich, yet the people are still poor. KIND has made me realize that I am the person in my community with the power to bring about this change."

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Florence Wambugu: feed the world
In Canada, genetically modified food may spark safety worries. But Florence Wambugu, the founder of Africa Harvest, a nonprofit biotechnology research group with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, has a different view. "Who are people in the developed world to tell those in Africa that using genetic techniques to increase crop production is wrong, when they have full bellies every day?" she asks. "A mother who has not seen her children eat for days would not question the ethics of making crops more productive."

"Africa is in crisis," continues Florence. "With rising food costs, population growth and water shortages, more productive plants are imperative to the survival of millions." According to the United Nations, more than 14 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, countries in the grip of a prolonged drought, depend on food aid.

Florence is no stranger to their plight. Born in Kenya in 1953, the sixth of 10 children, she grew up on a small subsistence farm. After her father's death, there was often no food to go around. So it was an extraordinary gamble when, braving village criticism, Florence's mother sold the family's single asset -- their cow -- in order to send her daughter to high school. Florence went on to take degrees in zoology and botany in Nairobi, the U.S. and the U.K.

Cultivating knowledge for more bountiful harvests
In 2002 she founded Africa Harvest, and has so far helped more than half a million farmers increase their output. "After seeing my community struggling and knowing what sacrifices my mother made to educate me, I wanted to go back and help make their lives easier," she says.

"New strains of grains needing less water, or that are nutritionally fortified, can cushion against natural disasters by helping farmers harvest even a small crop when conditions are dire. Food aid produced in other countries is not a viable long-term solution when 80 per cent of the Kenyan workforce is employed in agriculture."

Canada is actually a big supporter of biotechnology research in Africa. Africa Harvest has partnered with Canadian company Performance Plants Inc. to develop drought-resistant white maize, a project that aims to be ready for production by 2011. CIDA contributed more than $3.1 million to the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, and the Canada Fund for Africa has donated $30 million to the International Livestock Research Institute, based in Kenya.

New plants for a new future
In one project, Africa Harvest distributes banana seedlings. Banana plants are normally propagated by taking small suckers from an existing tree, resulting in the new plants having the same diseases and pests as the old. Africa Harvest uses tissue culture technology (feeding a tiny piece of a banana shoot with hormones) to produce fresh plants, under sterile conditions, and break the cycle of infestation. The plants can mature earlier and produce more fruit.

Josephine Mjuki Gituar is more than 70 years old and has benefitted hugely from these new plants. Her five-acre farm supports her, her son, his family of four and three grandchildren. "I bought 100 tissue culture seedlings three years ago and all of them are still alive and producing," she says. "My old banana plants used to die off from a fungal disease and there were never enough to sell, only enough to eat now and then."

"Now," says Josephine, "I have money to invest back into the farm -- last year I bought a water-storage tank and was able to pay my grandchildren's school fees. We have never had security like this before."

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Betty Oyella Bigombe: The keys to peace
"Please take me into the bush, so I can ask the rebels what happened to my two sons." The woman came from a village in northern Uganda that had been frequently attacked by soldiers from the notorious Lord's Resistance Army. She had approached Betty Oyella Bigombe, the chief government peace negotiator, during one of Betty's frequent visits to the region.

"She wanted to know if her sons were now rapists and killers," says Betty, who has campaigned tirelessly to bring an end to the ruthless 22-year war, in which more than 20,000 children have been abducted and conscripted as soldiers and sex slaves.

"What struck me," says Betty, "was her initial fear that her children may have been causing others to suffer. I told her I would find out, but I discovered that they were both dead. The pain for women in these types of conflicts never ends. Women's lives bear the brunt of war." A peace advocate and politician, Betty has proved herself to be one of the most influential negotiators in the ongoing talks with the Lord's Resistance Army. "I owe the communities in northern Uganda a chance for peace," she says, "because they taught me everything that I know today."

An early female presence in Uganda
Betty was born in Gulu, northern Uganda, in 1954, one of 11 children. A natural leader and hard worker, she went on to university and was eventually elected as one of Uganda's first female government ministers in 1988.

It was only a few years after Idi Amin, the former dictator, had been overthrown and a former rebel leader, Yoweri Museveni, had just been elected president. But several new rebel movements emerged. As the war dragged on, more than two million people were displaced and thousands more died.

Betty was appointed minister of pacification, in charge of trying to bring peace to the troubled north. "I was of the same tribe as the rebels," she says. "I very soon realized that the rebels were not going to surrender. I had to convince the government of Uganda that they would have to deal with the problems that were leading these rebels to fight.

"If peace talks are left to men, they discuss wages, cars and military," says Betty. "Women broaden the scope; they are more inclined to discuss day-to-day concerns such as water, education and health care. Women are also less threatening" and, she says, paradoxically can thus get away with using stronger language to get the message across. "Women also bring about sustainable peace because they try as hard as possible to ensure what has been agreed upon is implemented."

Finding ways to prevent raids
As chief mediator, Betty occasionally used her own money to buy food for the rebels. "The more they have," she says, "the fewer deadly raids they make on local villages." She has also worked tirelessly to bring food and medical assistance to the communities that have been affected by the conflict, and to create wider awareness of their need.

She helped the Canadian organization Act for Stolen Children release the awareness-raising film Uganda Rising in 2006 with the cooperation of several groups funded by CIDA, including Oxfam, Care Canada, UNICEF and World Vision Canada. Betty has also worked with the Canadian group Guluwalk, which organizes annual awareness and fundraising walks for children affected by the war. And now, the newly formed Betty Bigombe Children of War Foundation aims to generate worldwide awareness of the plight of people in northern Uganda.

Thanks to Betty's remarkable ability to persuade both sides to come to the table, a ceasefire was agreed upon in August 2006. And as a result of increasing world interest in the conflict, largely due to Betty's efforts, the latest round of talks -- ongoing -- are internationally led.

At press time, rebel leader Joseph Kony had several times refused to sign a final peace agreement as scheduled, but Betty remains optimistic. Awareness raising in Canada and other countries is a vital part of the process, she says. "These talks need international support to succeed, and I feel this support is now there."

To read more about the work being done by Boge, Hafsat, Florence and Betty, visit: www.kmgselfhelp.org, www.kind.org, www.ahbfi.org and www.bettybigombefoundation.com.

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This article was first printed in the December-January 2009 issue of Homemakers Magazine. Click to subscribe online and never miss an issue.