Our name is inspired by the last known survivor of the N’Nonmiton (meaning ‘our mothers’) who died after over 100 years of life in 1979. The N’Nonmiton were a powerful group of womn soldiers who protected the Kingdom of Dahomey (modern day Benin) from attack and French colonization. In Turkana, a language spoken by a community in Kenya, Nawi means ‘home’.

Nawi is thus an ode to a contribution of memorializing the names of African womn who have historically been invisibilized.

Nawi is an ode to an anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal struggle.

Nawi is a home for African feminists building new worlds through their work on the political economy.

Nawi is a community committed to centering African feminist analysis in the global political economy.

It is a home to collectively disrupt and transform existing economic models that perpetually produce, and reinforce existing, crises and gross inequalities.

And, a home to collectively dream, ideate, nurture, build and reclaim alternative economies rooted in solidarity, care and African womn’s liberation.

The Nawi Afrifem Collective (Nawi Collective) is an African Feminist Political Economy collective founded in 2020 with the purpose of building a community of African feminists and organizations working on influencing, analyzing, deconstructing and reconstructing the political economy. As African Feminists, we work to “reclaim the rich histories of Black [womn] in challenging all forms of domination, in particular as they relate to patriarchy, race, class, sexuality and global imperialism” in the context of macro-level economic systems. Our community believes that the macro-level economic systems and policies guiding our countries, and the global economy, are fundamentally at odds with life. We see ourselves as a river, who, alongside the tributaries of feminist and social justice organizing, cultivate a Pan-African feminist macro-level economics of life as a form of resistance, healing and worldbuilding to transform the political economy through feminist alternatives. We nurture forms of contemporarity that transform macro-level economic discourses, practices and ways of being, offering feminist alternatives to neoliberal capitalism, neo-colonial infrastructures and cis-heteropatriarchy.

To us, rivers symbolize healing, cleansing, movement and dynamism. They exist within a range of ecosystems, and provide sustenance to the ecosystems they serve aligned to our understanding of a Pan-African feminist macro-level economics of life. Crucially, rivers exist within a broader community of diverse water bodies such as streams, tributaries, lakes, deltas, oceans, estuaries and basins and reflects our commitment to weave a community of African womn researchers, writers, artists, healers and dreamers committed to analyzing, giving language to, changing the language of, and influencing the narratives guiding our macro-level economic policies.

Informed by the African Feminist Charter, we reclaim “the right to theorize for ourselves, write for ourselves, strategize for ourselves and speak for ourselves as African feminists”. NAWI centers the lived experiences and knowledge production of African feminists and womn in our analysis and framing, and influences local, national, regional, and international macro-level economic fora from this vantage point. Our African feminist politics are also expressed in our commitment to cultivate macro-level economic alternatives that are grounded in economic justice and liberation of African womn, and all those oppressed by unjust systems of power.

We exist to build and strengthen the foundation for an effective coalition of African feminists and social justice actors working collectively to challenge hegemonic capitalistic approaches in favor of approaches that are rooted in solidarity, equity, care, and justice. We are cultivating a delta that inspires new ways of organizing for social change and influencing macro-level economic policies. By doing so, not only do we transform our collective ways of working, but we also transform the political economy. Our work, more than being against a system, is at the service of life. Our work seeks to build a Pan-African feminist macro-level economics of life that enables us to exit unjust neoliberal extractivist orthodoxies. We cultivate collective liberation by:

“... [Recognizing] that [the status quo is] absurd. Know that it doesn’t have to be. [Re-imagine] a different way. Make it make sense. Read the works of African womn who have done the imagining, who do the work, who have the alternatives. Listen to market womn. Listen to the workers. Center life. Eat in [community]. Share what you have. Recognize when it’s enough. Push our governments to restructure borrowing and debt in our favor. Push them to fund healthcare, to fund education and to fund [agroecology]. Grow the food. Take care of the soil. Watch the bloom. Harvest the goods.”

A Pan-African feminist macro-level economic analysis interrogates how interlocking systems of oppression shape global macro-level economic governance and the politics of everyday life. It names the prevalence of patriarchal and social violence against African womn and marginalized people and proffers viable feminist macro-level economic alternatives rooted in the rich histories and knowledge production of African womn working to end all forms of injustice. NAWI specifically focuses on macro-level economic policy that influences economic development , and the impact it has on the lives, human rights, and dignity of African womn and girls. Critically, this framing transcends the oft-narrow framing of macroeconomics and considers “efforts broad enough to have important aggregate or economywide distributional and welfare implications” . We co-create and expand feminist approaches to macro-level economic policy in order to:

● Democratize and decolonize economic decision-making,

● Center equality, wellbeing and sustainability as the objective of economic activity,

● Decolonize knowledge production by centring cultural work that shapes, gives language to, and transforms macro-level economic narratives.

● Reprioritize the role of the state in ensuring that economy activity is in the service of life, and

● Recognize the central role of social reproduction .

We believe that macro-level economic policy is a gender justice issue. We therefore leverage Pan-African feminist political economy approaches to understand, name, and expose the root causes of injustice and worsening inequalities. It also gives us language and frameworks to dream, re-imagine and advocate for feminist alternatives of the organization, management and distribution of resources in such a way that they are in the service of life. When macro-level economic systems and policies are in the service of life, they are rooted in equity, justice, solidarity, care and collective liberation.

Our delta is a wetland that is formed by carrying the worldbuilding deposits of our rivers of liberation into the larger water bodies of dominant macro-level economic systems. We envision a radically transformed and just economic system that embraces African feminist imaginations of macro-level economic systems. This system upholds the enjoyment of human rights, dignity, and the needs of human life as well as the natural environment. We dream of life affirming African feminist political economies that center education, healthcare, housing, nutritious food, agroecology, community, love, reciprocity, beauty, solidarity and joy.

Our source speaks to the starting point of our rivers of liberation. Our starting point is informed by the principles outlined in the African Feminist Charter and grounds our way of being in the world. It is also inspired by the rich engagements we have had with African feminists, radical womn and those organizing for liberation across the world.

● Collective Care

Our engagements are rooted in a political and ecofeminist ethics of care. Care will remain at the core of how we interact with each other and the environment. Kindness and consideration will inform all our engagements. We intend to be robust in our politics and gentle in how we engage with one another. We are intentional about exploring and embodying this tension as we transform the global political economy in community with others.

We see our role as a catalyst within a broader community and ecosystem of social change actors, which we refer to as tributaries. We navigate the world with an understanding that one actor cannot bring about the radical systems change that we envision. Therefore, we commit to centering the work of building community without becoming the center. We aim to influence, and be influenced by the radical tributaries that catalyzes the change we long to see through global solidarity. Our work therefore, grounded in the nexus of care and community-building, enables a confluence of feminist alternatives in the political economy.

● Curiosity & experimentation

As a learning organization, we are adopting an exploratory approach to visioning, inquiring and engaging this work in a way that honors the emergent nature of social change. While remaining bold in our Pan-African Feminist grounding, we commit to engage with an openness that enables us to explore varied channels of knowledge, experimenting, and producing rich bodies of diverse knowledge, curated by us for us.

● Audacity

We dare to be bold and audacious in our approach to transforming the global political economy. We are cognisant that challenging hegemonic economic systems is not an easy task. We acknowledge that even in moments of great backlash and fear, we will continuously choose audacity in spite of our fear, embodying the spirit of the N’Nonmiton.

● Rigor

We are committed to being rigorous in our analysis, community-building, and influencing. We center African Feminist individual and institutional ethics, as outlined in the African Feminist Charter, in how we conduct our work and build alliances with African feminists and organizations. Our attention to detail, at different levels of scale, supports us to embody the spirit of Nawi.

● The Political Value of Imagination and Dreaming

We believe that dreaming is potent political work that is often neglected in favor of “low-hanging fruit”, urgency addiction and pragmatism. We, therefore, seek to water the barren dreamscapes of social change actors by cultivating dreaming spaces for African Feminists and collectives who work on, or seek to contribute towards, the transformation of the political economy. Our forms of engagement enable us to nourish individual and collective dreams. We invest in our capacity to dream by honoring and working towards African Feminist (re-)imaginations of the political economy across generations.

● Consistency & Reflexivity

We commit to remain consistent in the interrogation, expansion, and embodiment of our values. We dare to demonstrate care, dynamism, and integrity across our work.

● Mutual Trust

We are committed to creating an environment that cultivates trust, where those marginalized by oppressive systems feel valued, heard and safe to contribute to, challenge, and advance Nawi’s work. We seek to co-create cosmologies of mutuality in our engagements, ensuring that our work is beneficial to African womn, and the world-building commitments of African feminist, womn’s rights, and economic justice movements.

● Intentional Adaptation

We are nimble and responsive to shifts in the ecosystem, and frequently adapt our analysis and ways of working. We evoke the language of intentional adaptation to speak to an agility that is rooted in our values and principles, and our understanding of the primacy of change.

African womn are the hardest hit by prevailing, multiple and intersecting systems of oppression and exploitation. These are bred by a lethal combination of patriarchal, neoliberal, neo-colonial, racist and classist economic and social systems. An intersectional analysis of these prevailing systems is crucial to the agents of change committed to African feminist politics. It allows for a comprehensive articulation of the struggles we confront and a clearer roadmap of the strategies we need to employ across local, national, regional and global spaces if we are to achieve radical systems change.

Current macro-level economic models are particularly problematic for African womn. The orthodox obsession with market-based solutions and economic growth confines us to the fringes of what is considered the mainstream economy while exploiting our paid and underpaid labor, bodies, knowledge, natural environment and communities. It is womn who are most affected by the austerity cult of structural adjustment, ‘fiscal consolidation’ and conditionalities.

It is womn, whose lives are turned upside down when we step in to subsidize failed public systems, particularly during times of cyclical health, economic, livelihood, and climate crises. It is African womn traders in the informal economy who are pushed out of business when African markets are open for trade using a model that favors big business. It is African womn smallholder farmers who produce the bulk of Africa’s food with little to no structural support.

Similar trajectories are observed in the context of social justice organizing. The industrialization of social change, alongside the technocratic turn of the past half century has resulted in the neoliberal co-option of radical ‘development’ alternatives. The corporatization of social change organizing, expressed in the uncritical adoption of business models, language, and ways of working has stripped social justice organizing of its political vision and ideological edge.

African feminist and womn’s rights movements, who are at the forefront of transformative social change, are underfunded and stretched thin, despite the rhetoric of investing in womn’s empowerment and gender equality. This is demonstrated by the Black Feminist Fund’s research that reveals that a mere 0.1% - 0.35% of global foundation giving was distributed to Black organizing led by womn, girls and trans people in 2018. Additionally, only 0.22% of human rights grantmaking was allocated to the economic and labor rights of Black womn, girls and trans people. These financing flows are mostly restrictive, onerous, and project-based; contrary to the enabling funding flows that support movements to flourish.

Furthermore, African womn’s rights issues and language have been co-opted in a number of national, regional and global spaces as well as by the private sector. This has meant that the meaning and political dimensions of this language have been skewed, watered down, co-opted and depoliticized, as demonstrated by the appropriation of frameworks and strategies such as gender mainstreaming, womn’s economic empowerment, and intersectionality. Strategies to address what amount to gross violations of womn’s human rights remain largely tepid and non-transformational. Many of them have been limited to building the capacity of individual womn, supporting microeconomic interventions and ‘womn’s inclusion’ with minor tweaks, if at all, to deeply unequal and undemocratic structures. These interventions have relegated African womn to ‘beneficiary’ positions subject to prescriptive decisions arrived at by others.

Considering all these, there is a need for the dislodging, disrupting, and decolonization of the unequal and hierarchical power dynamics around macro-level economic knowledge production as well as policy- and decision-making. This can be done by placing the transformation of power asymmetries at the center of our analysis and using an African feminist lens to foreground the rights and lives of African womn.

“In a time not so far off, a time perhaps parallel to the one we are in now,

A new world is coming into being

An imagining, a struggle.

A light.

The next time you blink, stay there, keep your eyes closed for just a few more seconds

And you will see it

You will be it

The future coming into being”-

- Agazit Abate

An estuary is a coastal waterbody where one or more rivers of liberation meet the ocean of orthodox macro-level economic systems to co-create Pan-African Feminist economic futures. The Nawi Collective seeks to create spaces that build communities, relationships, and conversations in Africa by African feminists to transform the global political economy. We leverage African feminist bodies of knowledge, written by multi-passionate womn in their own voices and grounded in their realities, to frame, challenge and transform macro-level narratives, systems, and policy-making. In addition, it is important for us to ensure cross movement-building with Third World feminist constellations and communities that continue to be marginalized by age, race, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation and gender identity, location, religion, or any combination of the above. We aim to realize our objectives through our streams of change.

i. Pan-African Feminist Knowledge Production

Our knowledge production is grounded in Pan-African feminist political economy analyses. We cultivate feminist macro-level economic knowledge production by centering cultural memory and knowledge through the curation of multimedia resources, crafting macro-level economic analysis in various artistic forms, curating a repository of African feminist scholarship on the political economy, and centering diverse ways of knowing in our efforts to influence macro-level decision-making. We acknowledge that questioning is political, hence we aim to be engaged in policy analysis and critique, and the development of cultural work, supporting our commitment to decolonize knowledge and overturn hierarchies of knowledge. The overall goal of this stream of change is to collate African feminist knowledge bases and increase the demand for African feminist analysis within the global political economy.

ii. Strengthening Collective Action for Macro-Level Economic Justice

We are committed to strengthening existing collectives working on a range of feminist and social justice agendas within the political economy. We are also intentional about curating and contributing to spaces for learning and engagement in order to ensure that Pan-African feminist analysis is embedded in macro-level conversations.

iii. Influencing Social Change

Nawi seeks to influence different social change actors through its ways of being, its Pan-African feminist analysis, its forms of organizing, and its vision for change. We seek to shape and influence political economy narratives and how collectives are thinking about the political economy in relation to their areas of focus. We want to influence critical actors, influencers and decision-makers in the social change ecosystem, including feminist and womn’s rights activists, organizations, economic justice organizations, resource partners, think tanks, and multilateral institutions, amongst others. We also envisage various social movement actors utilizing our knowledge base as an advocacy tool in their engagements. Ultimately, we seek to build a river system of African feminist political economy scholars and activists who work towards the realization of just worlds buttressed by African feminist economic solidarities.

A confluence is where two rivers of liberation meet. Nawi is working to devote time and resources to building a community based on shared African feminist political economy analysis and trust. We believe this is a more sustainable approach because it supports us to reimagine and deconstruct the global political economy by centring African feminist narratives. In doing so, we will collaborate with existing economic and gender justice coalitions, communities and initiatives rather than being in competition with them. By leveraging our collective ‘power with’, African womn collectively breathe life into and redefine macro-level economic spaces, instead of conforming to their current logics and modus operandi.

We are working to build a collective of African feminists whose passion and work is centered on macro-level economic justice. We see these strategic role-players as follows:

i. womn’s rights and feminist organizations working on a range of issues across the political economy.

ii. Mass movements and civic organizing spaces that mobilize outside of the frames of the NGO-industrial complex.

iii. Independent African feminist thought leaders that are not aligned to any institution.

iv. African Feminists who work for mainstream organizations (including African Civil Society, economic justice organizations, think tanks International NGOs, and regional bodies, amongst others).

Nawi’s essence and spirit guides her channel of transformation. We desire to practice and learn from new ways of being and doing. These new and reclaimed ways include incorporating, pushing, and appreciating different ways of organizing, collaboration, understanding and influencing macro-level economic systems and policy-making. Our ways of being are anchored in creating community amidst cultures of individualism, and fostering cultures of care, trust, love, openness, beauty, awe, appreciating diversity and different ways of knowing by African womn in all our diversity. Our commitments to these ways of being and working cultivate the just economies we long to see in the world.

Nawi believes it is possible to influence, analyze, deconstruct, and reconstruct macro-level economic policies, narratives, and understanding by growing and continuously deepening intersectional Pan-African feminist analysis. Nawi is investing in building collective African civil society and individual transformative power, with African feminist and womn’s rights organizations’ leading the advancement of macro-level economic alternatives that serve African womn. To catalyze the world-building of African feminist and womn’s rights movements, Nawi has committed to:

● Transformative knowledge production by conducting research, story-telling, and making art that presents analysis, critique and African feminist reimaginations of the political economy. We are also committed to building a repository of African feminist scholarship around macro-level economic themes.

● Build community and strengthen networks of African womn, individuals and collectives, who share a desire for liberatory change.

● Influence the ecosystem of actors working on, and resourcing, macro-level economic organizing to adopt African feminist political economy narratives and advocate for life-affirming systems and policies.

● Nurture spaces for the development and flourishing of feminist political economy collectives.

We hold the following assumptions:

● That the coordinated presentation and promotion of feminist alternatives, by African feminists and womn’s rights organizations, will shift the global political economy.

● African feminist alternatives will be embedded into African macro-level economic initiatives, processes, thinking and advocacy; and in turn will support adoption in global and regional spaces.

● African feminists and womn rights organizations, as tributaries, will build a critical mass and shared understanding of feminist macro-level economic alternatives.

● Feminist organizing will transform global and regional macro-level economic policy spaces.

● Tributaries will cultivate allies to influence and challenge the tokenistic and manipulative engagement with alternative feminist narratives.

● Our collective ways of working, as tributaries, will yield results in the long run - that the strategic intentions that we cultivate through our channels of transformation will yield emergent outcomes that expand our conceptualisations of macro-level economic justice that buttress the liberation of African womn.

Cumulatively, the Nawi Collective seeks to influence the diversity of social justice movements working towards the realization of economic justice that promotes rather than undermines the achievement of African womn’s rights and gender justice.

On our honor and by our word.

We vow to center life.

We will ask of the world, of our economic systems and policies, of our governments, of our work and of our relationships – Is it fair? Is it just? Is it kind?

We will be driven by curiosity, exploration, experimentation, and openness.

We will be wild, our throats open, screams and laughter, in our critique and our imaginings.

We will be daring and when we are scared or unsure, we will call on the help of our sisters, our ancestors and the spirits to guide us.

We will privilege language, colloquial everyday language. We will privilege, not terms, but description and stories and our senses.

We will ask questions like, how does it feel? What does it look like? What are the stories?

We will stop to admire the flowers, the craftsmanship of a fine piece of furniture, we will take walks. We will do this to stay alive and with the knowledge that the systems and ways of being that we work to change are, among many things, at odds with beauty.

We vow that our lives and our work will be beautiful.

We vow to build worlds from our dreams and imaginations.