DREAMING AND IMAGINING ECOFEMINIST FUTURES

WoMin has initiated a Pan African project which aims to support rural and marginalized women across the continent to dream and imagine a different community, nation and Africa; to identify and support living alternatives, and to build a collective vision expressed through an African Ecofeminist Charter for Just Transition and Alternatives to Development.

This project draws in a wide network of organisations and movements working across Africa to support the crafting of imaginations for a different future with women as a key political task. Arising from the African Ecofeminist Just Transition roundtable which took place in Mogale City, Johannesburg in July 2018, the opens in a new windowMogale Declarationopens PDF file sets out 26 key principles to guide thinking about the Just Transition from an African Ecofeminist perspective.

One of the most important ideas outlined in the Mogale Declaration is the fact that this imagining of a different Africa cannot be driven by elites and women positioned in arenas of privilege. It must, instead, be driven from below by women across the continent who bear the costs of a destructive extractivist opens in a new windowcapitalist and patriarchal model of development.  Currently, the project is unfolding through a series of dialogues with community women and activists that will continue to deepen and expand to other countries throughout 2022 with the support of the Steering Group established during the meeting in Mogale. A methodological framework and toolsopens PDF file to support these conversations have been developed and tested in Madagascar, South Africa and Guinea Conakry from October 2020 – January 2021.

As the project grows, a repository documenting the voices, dreams and imaginations of women on the very frontlines of struggle will be woven through multimedia through stories, audio-visual content, art, poetry and more.

Learn more about the piloting exercises held in four sites characterised by community and women’s resistance against extractivist development projects: Toliara and Sakatia Island in Madagascar; Newcastle in South Africa; and Khoré Lafou in Guinea Conakry.