"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation."
Dar Es Salaam – “You cannot continue with your education. You have to get married because this man has already paid dowry for you,” Matilda H’s father told her. Matilda, from Tanzania, was 14 and had just passed her primary school exams and had been admitted to secondary school. She pleaded with her father to allow her to continue her education, but he refused.
Mazrui’s humanism was based on the dignity of all human beings regardless of race, religion, region or gender. It was a humanism linked to the quest for reparative justice, peace, self-determination, the rights of women, secularism and prosperity for all.
When Ugandan farmer’s daughter Rose Akurut became engaged to a man from a village far from her own, her parents could not be more thrilled. But the dowry she would bring — cows, goats and cash — soured the marriage and brought dark clouds over the partnership, a story repeated by many others in Uganda.
For those interested in gender equality, women’s rights, and even women’s power, these are heady days on the African continent. Between a new Constitution in Tanzania, the reformulation of gender policy in Kenya, and the majority of people in Burkina Faso in favor of progressive change on gender rights, it seems Africa is on the move.
Kigali — Polygamy severely complicates land ownership and could stall the growth of Africa’s Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs), says Ugandan Minister for Trade and Industry.
Bande, Niger – Married men and young boys in Niger learn more about reproductive health, childbirth and family planning in the School for Husbands, an intiative supported by the UNFPA to promote women’s health and rights.
Native of Cape Town, Sean Jacobs lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches in Manhattan. He obsesses about the relationship between politics and popular culture, but the main rationale for his blog is to comment on what passes for media coverage of the African continent.
Sokari Ekine is a Nigerian social justice activist living in Spain, with a background in technology, gender issues and human rights. She is interested in creating a community of grassroots African bloggers as a way for Africans to exchange ideas, share experiences and tell their own stories in our own words.
Rosebelle Kagumire is an experienced Ugandan Journalist. She won the best Journalist blogger English category at the Panos hosted competition in 2009. Currently she is a student of MA. Media, Conflict and Peace studies at University for Peace (UPEACE), Costa Rica.
Project by VITA SOCIETÀ EDITORIALE S.P.A.
P.IVA 11273390150
ISCRIZIONE ROC N.3275
Direttore Responsabile afronline.org: Giuseppe Frangi
P.IVA 11669920156 © 2011
