#msafropolitan

In fact, the very meaning of the term ’empowerment’ is rooted in the mind. The prefix ‘em’ stems from Latin, meaning to ‘put into’.  The suffix ‘ment’, in Latin, signifies something having to do with the mind. Thus, empowerment connotes to put power into the mind.

May 2015 be a year of deep, philosophical introspection about future Africa. May the result be clarity in how we have come to where, who and what we are. And most importantly, how we will get to where, who and what we want to be

The situation seems in fact graver than ever. Despite Obama’s claims that Al-Qaeda is near defeated, the 19 US embassy closures this week including four in Africa (Madagascar, Rwanda, Burundi and Mauritius) suggest otherwise. The circumstances are not aided by the increasing number of western-based jihadists, such as Denis Mamadu Cuspert, a Ghanaian-German former gangsta rapper known as Deso Dogg who is now a Jihadi rapper, Abou Maleeq, and is fighting in Syria and whose disquieting Youtube videos encourage blowing people up with bombs and grenades. Of course, all Africans are impacted by the global war and its steady spread to African soil. Like Professor Wole Soyinka says about war and fundamentalism in the remarkable book Of Africa – ”As if the African continent did not have enough on her plate, enter a shadowy but lethal force determined to reenslave a continent” – but nevertheless African women are especially affected for several reasons of which I’ll name a few.

To get to the bottom of it, we must ask, what makes the clitoris in itself so dangerous that millions of women are prevented from owning one? I’ll tell you what. The clitoris is the only human body part that exists purely for the sake of pleasure. Unlike the penis, which is responsible for urination and whose reproductive function is tied to sexual pleasure, a woman’s clitoris has nothing to do with babies or pee. In other words, the scientific reason for the clitoris is simply to enable a woman’s orgasm. Of course this is a problem. Why is this a problem? Well, because it means that female anatomy is at direct odds with the idea that women’s primary sexual role is reproduction. A woman’s biology presents a threat to the myth that a woman’s ultimate role is mothering, a myth which people are so fond of that to challenge it can be to risk your life.

While the term ‘feminism’ is an import to Africa (as all English words are), the concept of opposing patriarchy, the raison d’être of feminism if you like, is not foreign. Africa has some of the oldest civilizations in the world so while they didn’t always call it feminism (the noun) as far back as we can trace we know that there were women who were feminist (the adjective) and who found ways of opposing patriarchy. Feminism is an important part of African women’s “herstory”.