Africa

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In her poetic contributions to our edition, Ayak blatantly challenges this as she paints and captures thousands of images, voices in and between each word. 

In her Podcast, “Digital Dada,” on a special series called “Stories of Resilience”, Cecilia Maundu invites Lucia Ayiela from Kenya. This conversation explores the experience of women journalists and digital advocates in the region. Lucia Ayiela shares with us her journey, the high and low points of her career, as a digital activist and how she empowers women activists to join the digital…

Too emotional, too angry, too oppressed, too something for a system built on severing every umbilical cord there is between Mother and child: Mother Earth, Mother Nature and Mother Africa. What is it like being a Black Muslim Woman in the Arab world or the world in general? In this contribution, Dahlia viscerally confronts some of the can, cannots, do and do nots society throws in the face of…

Out of sight, out of mind - is one of the realest phenomena confronting warriors of truth and justice on the forefront of humanitarian disasters. Beyond the solidarity profile picture changes and statuses of “please pray” for whichever catastrophe that is ravaging the very heart and soul of humanity anywhere on this planet of ours, there are very real, live humans literally dying to live.…

Njeri Maina produced a documentary that speaks about the “Poverty Period” in Kenya. In her production, Njeri tries to build and weave a narrative that exposes the cultural stigma and stereotypes that are related to menstruation and how such socially constructed beliefs and ideas are used to discriminate against women and girls in public and private spaces. Njeri also explores how class status…

Co-editor Dr. Dimah shares with us this existential piece she wrote “The War on time.” With it she sets us free from slaving ourselves by the entrapment of time that we created with a flawed understanding of time, and what time is meant for. The piece is also meant to provide a reflective piece into the journey Dimah and Tigist have had in this editorial process; and the conception of time as…

This personal essay by Lara Mansour narrates the experience of being gay in a conservative country like Egypt, and the anxieties of first-ever digital sexual encounter.

Sex positivity is being rejected by many now given how it is portrayed as something that requires hypersexualised expressions rather than understanding the nuances of what it actually entails. Tiffany Mugo discusses how podcasts are revisiting sex positivity through storytelling.

GenderIT is looking for writers, artists, creators and filmmakers from the Horn of Africa to pitch stories around the theme: On Holding "Half the Sky": Stories of Resilience, for its Horn of Africa regional edition 2022. Deadline to submit pitches is August 29, 2022.

Young Black women are moving away from the "Stong Black Woman" narrative, and using online platforms to redefine digital feminism for them. Fungai Machirori explores how one young Black woman is attempting to hack the system. But is it working?