A Portal to Macro-Level Economics through the Lens of African Feminists

• Day 5: Dec 18 (UTC+8) 4:00 pm-5:15 pm

NAWI Afrifem

In December, the Nawi – Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective launched a repository of all forms of written and spoken knowledge by African women on economic issues, with a focus on African feminist thought in particular. Developed as a comprehensive, multi-themed annotated bibliography, it pulled together in one place the work of African women from across different fields who have written on economic issues in one form or another, from academic pieces found in journals and anthologies, to Internet articles on popular sites, activist platforms, personal blogs, podcasts, and other media. Short annotations accompany each entry, along with direct open access links wherever available. The platform also collates as many video and audio knowledge resources available by African women on economic issues. The initial collated annotated bibliography was arranged across sub-themes – including but not limited to agricultural policy, financialisation, women’s labour and more.

The proposed platform would be the first of its kind to offer an immediate entry point to easily locate and draw on the work of African women in this area. Such visibility is a critical step towards ensuring that currently marginalised voices and data sources are more likely to influence the wider works of scholars as well as policy and decision-makers. The platform also acts as a space where a community of African women working on these issues can find each other’s contributions and further build and develop rigorous, comprehensive responses that both effectively challenge and offer viable alternatives to the dominant economic orthodoxies. It is hoped that the platform itself will generate the impetus for the development of further work on the issues, creating a form of knowledge activism in its own right.

This session provided a space to share ideas and cross-learn across and between regions.