“When You Grow Up, I Will Marry You”: The Ghanaian MP’s Comment and How We Normalised the Sexualisation of African Girls
Hon. Yakubu Mohammed, 37-year-old Member of Parliament for Ahafo Ano South East, was addressing a group of primary school pupils visiting Parliament House in Ghana. These were children on a school excursion, young girls and boys brought to their country’s legislature to learn about governance, to see democracy in practice, to imagine what their futures […]
The Invisible Tax: How Water Scarcity Is Stealing Time, Health, and Futures From African Women and Girls
In nearly 80% of households across sub-Saharan Africa without piped water, the work of collecting water falls to women and girls. Not because they chose it. Because it was assigned to them — by social norms, household hierarchies, and a water infrastructure deficit that has never been adequately addressed. Before school. Before breakfast. Sometimes before […]
The Future of Feminist Organisations Depends on More Than One Woman: A Case for Co-Leadership
There is a particular kind of dissonance that feminist organisations have lived with for a long time and not always named directly. We build movements around the redistribution of power. We write strategies about dismantling hierarchy. We publish reports on the underrepresentation of women in leadership and the structural barriers that keep them out and […]
The Gambia’s FGM Ban Must Not Be Repealed: A Girl’s Body Is Not a Cultural Debate
The Gambia’s Supreme Court is currently weighing whether to uphold or strike down the country’s 2015 ban on female genital mutilation. The case was brought by religious leaders and a member of parliament who failed to repeal the ban through parliament in 2024 and have now taken their fight to the highest court in the […]
Raped, Abandoned, Gone: The Justice System That Could Not Save Favour Agbro
Favour Agbro was twenty years old. She was a nursing student in Warri with a dream of building something online, a digital presence, maybe an income, something of her own. When she saw a post from a popular content creator in Asaba offering to teach young people how to grow and monetize their social media […]
Convicted, Celebrated, and Back in a Palace: Nigeria’s Shameless Celebration of a Child Sex Offender
Baba Ijesha — Olanrewaju James, Nollywood actor, convicted child sex offender, registered on the Lagos State sex offenders register, conviction upheld by the Supreme Court of Nigeria, visited the palace of the Ooni of Ife. He sat with one of the most revered traditional rulers in Yorubaland. He left with a brand new car and […]
No Evidence, No Trial, No Mercy: How Ummulkhairi Was Burned Alive for a Crime She Never Committed
She stopped to ask some children for directions. That’s it. That’s the whole story before it became a tragedy. Malama Ummulkhairi, a teacher at an Islamiyya school in New Mararaban Jos, Kaduna State, was on her way to attend an Islamic lecture on a Sunday afternoon. She didn’t know the exact location of the school, […]
How Many Women Must Be Failed Before The System Changes? Africa’s Pattern of Failing Survivors
In February 2026, two women in Lagos did something that takes enormous courage. They reported their rapist. They did not stay silent. They did not go home and try to forget it happened. They went straight to the police. They went to Mirabel Center and got medical examinations. They gave detailed statements. They identified their […]
This Is How Men Learn to Rape in 2026: Group Chats, Livestreams, and Zero Consequences
Let us tell you what is happening right now, as you read this. Somewhere online, not on the dark web, not buried in some encrypted corner you’d never find, men are gathered in group chats, sharing tips. On dosages. On which sleeping medications dissolve easiest in a drink. On how to keep a woman unconscious […]
Shot, Burned, Stabbed, Beaten—12 Black Women Dead and America Won’t Say Their Names
Between January and April 2026, just four months, twelve Black women were murdered across America. Some were killed by intimate partners. Some by strangers. Several were pregnant when they died. Several were mothers whose children will now grow up without them. Two were elected officials serving their communities. Twelve Black women. Dead in 120 days. […]