Feminist Knowledge | Review Essay: African Feminist Studies: 1980-2002

Concluding Comments: the Imperatives of Networking

A salient concern raised in reviewing African feminist studies is the need for ongoing dialogue and collaboration both to encourage further work on gaps within the field and to develop the promising connections and linkages initiated by research to date. Located in institutions where we are often constrained by heavy teaching loads or administrative duties, sometimes unaware of each other's work because of the relative paucity of African conferences in our field; unable to visit other countries and universities because of limited funding from our universities for research and conference travel; and pressured to take up important yet exhausting ideological and political battles in unsupportive institutional environments, as African feminist scholars we often have considerably fewer opportunities to network effectively and consistently than many feminist academics in the west.

As the preceding discussion has indicated, however, the period from about 1990 to the present day has seen the launch or consolidation of crucial organisations, civil society movements, meetings, research projects and gender and women's studies programmes on the continent. One meeting that deserves special mention is the International Women's Worlds Congress, held once every three years since 1984, which was hosted in Africa for the first time in 2002 [23] . The hosting of the event in Kampala, by a Women's Studies department that has long played a pivotal role in launching women's and gender studies in Africa, was significant in signalling a reorientation in the international women's movement towards African trajectories and contexts. Sessions and papers clearly illustrated that much research produced in Africa, and indeed much produced by researchers abroad who work on Africa, is charting very distinct priorities for taking gender justice forward. The previous congress held in Norway in 1999 focused on general and abstract explorations of identity. In contrast, the Kampala Congress offered a wide spread of both theoretical and practical engagements with gender, with many themes (such as "Gender, the Economy and the Workplace"; Gender Agriculture and the Environment"; Gendering Politics and Governance" and "Women; Peace and Conflict") being offered on specific areas in politics, the economy and society.

Consequently, the relationship between theory and practice was frequently raised in very provocative ways. Often it seemed that understanding immediate, local struggles and relationships was central to developing incisive theoretical explorations, even though strategic practical interventions were usually seen to be informed by theoretical awareness. The intricate relationship between theory and practice was also raised by the fact that the Know-How and Women's World conferences were hosted at the same time. Because Know-How was an event aimed mainly at "practitioners", and Women's World targeted mainly "researchers", practitioners and researchers often inhabited each other's worlds. The conference therefore identified new ways of exploring the interface of practice and theory, fresh angles for thinking about how we act in relation to what and how we know and interpret. This, in view of what is by now an entrenched emphasis within feminist studies in the West on highly abstract, abstruse and dense theoretical reflection, is an important intervention.

The 2002 Women's Worlds Congress has consolidated the launch of organisations like FEMNET (the African Women's Development and Communication Network), Abantu for Development (http://www.abantu.org) and Amanitare (http://www.amanitare.org). The strengthening of a cohesive body of African feminist work has also been tremendously enriched by teaching programmes and research projects in Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa and many other African countries.

While the quantitative growth of feminist organisations, teaching and research has steadily grown in recent years, effective networking and communication have helped to ensure the wide circulation of existing work. Communications networks and publishing sites on the continent offered through, for example, Isis-WICCE (http://www.isis.or.ug), the APC-Africa-Women Network (http://www.enda.sn/synfev/apcfemafr/indexapc.html), Flame, African sisters Online (http://www.flamme.org), Women'sNet (http://www.womensnet.org.za) and the Uganda Women's Media Centre have been important here. Equally significant are continental capacity-building projects like CODESRIA's Gender Institute, which works to strengthen gender analysis in African social science research, the African Women's Media Centre's leadership and skills training programmes, the GWSAfrica Project (http://www.gwsafrica.org) coordinated by the African Gender Institute in South Africa; or the publication of journals including Agenda, Safere and Feminist Africa.

It is crucial, however, that feminist networking in Africa be informed by the priorities and legacies that have thus far shaped the singularity of progressive struggles for gender justice on the continent. In particular, the agendas, priorities and directions that have shaped radical gender research and advocacy in Africa would need to be a crucial component of networking that promotes truly transformative agendas, given the mounting backlash against these, as well as many post-colonial states' token support for "women's issues".

The value of networking for consolidating changing progressive feminist agendas was well illustrated in the CODESRIA symposium on "African Gender Research in the New Millennium: Perspectives, Directions and Challenges" in April 2002. A key subject of discussion among participants was the state, with many contesting its present role as self-appointed custodian of women's rights. These researchers and writers are concerned mainly with state strategies from the eighties, and assess ways in which radical intellectual activism and civil society organisations can meaningfully promote gender justice without capitulating to state control and the narrow policy activism that has increasingly dominated gender advocacy. The emphasis on radicalism in the face of state rhetoric, conservative policy-making and donor-funded advocacy was also reflected in the attention paid to rigorous theory-building (rather than essentialist rhetoric and myth-making) and to close scrutiny of women's involvement in economic processes. Discussion of globalisation, of women and resources and of the intricacies of culture and ideology raised the significance of thinking about development as a broad social process with human implications, rather than as a technocratic operation determined by the state's interest in economic efficiency and "good governance".

Generally, the frequency of discussion about the political quality of gender research at the 2002 CODESRIA symposium highlighted the need for a critical body of independent work within the growing mass of work that deals broadly with gender. A heightened alertness to the politics of particular kinds of gender research is a feature that probably most clearly distinguishes the recent CODESRIA symposium from the CODESRIA gender conference a decade ago. At the earlier gathering, a key aim was to affirm the role of gender research in rethinking gender-blind intellectual work on the continent, with this consensus establishing an important agenda for gender research in the early nineties. The new millennium has raised fresh challenges for feminists seeking to support civil society movements that contest the lip service paid to gender by African governments often acting in concert with foreign donors and governments.

Footnote

[23] For a detailed report of this event, see Desiree Lewis and Elaine Salo, A Review of the 8th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women: Gendered Worlds: Gains and Challenges, July 21-26 2002”  http://www.gwsafrica.org/activities/index.html