Nigeria

In July 2007, in Jordan, three WLP alumnae won seats in their municipal councils. Additionally, two alumnae of a regional training in Africa have gone on to take leadership roles in NGOs and in civil service. Christiana Thorpe and Daphne Williams were appointed as National Electoral Commissioners of Sierra Leone in 2005 and 2006 respectively, with Ms. Thorpe gaining the distinction of being the first woman to hold that position in the country. Elections were held in Sierra Leone in August 2007, with run-off election results still pending, and Ms. Thorpe and Ms. Williams were key players in overseeing the process.

We are pleased to share that Ms. Solome Nakaweesi Kimbugwe has been named the Executive Director of Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA) headquartered in Kampala, Uganda. AMwA was founded to create space for African women to organize autonomously, identify issues of concern to them and to empower them to speak for themselves. AMwA aims to provide solidarity, support, awareness, and to link African women active in skills building and self-development.

January 21, 2007: At the Seventh World Social Forum in Nairobi, Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP) presented an interactive panel and dialogue with women’s rights activists from Africa and the Middle East who discussed strategies to strengthen social movements, particularly the women’s movement, in an era of crisis for civic organizing. Efforts to achieve gender equality, human rights, and social justice are being increasingly challenged by rising extremism and fundamentalism, wars and conflict, poverty, and violence. Activists are overcoming these barriers by working together to devise innovative, context-relevant strategies that will transform power relations and dynamics with the family, community, and society.

Approximately 65 women, and some men participated in two leadership training workshops conducted by WLP's Moroccan partner, L'Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM) in Taza and Ouarzazat between April and July 2004. The workshops were conducted using both the French and Maghreby-Arabic editions of the Leading to Choices leadership training manual.

In the remote northeastern town of Taza, twenty-five women and five men, participated in the training workshop, the majority of whom were representatives of organizations involved with economic development, social services, education, poverty eradication, women's rights advocacy, and improving women's health.

Twenty-five women from eight African countries met in Calabar, Nigeria for the Africa Regional Learning Institute for Women's Leadership and Training of Trainers. Co-organized by Women's Learning Partnership (WLP) and BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights, the five-day Institute aimed to strengthen participants' capacity to become better trainers and advocates in empowering grassroots women to become effective decision-makers in their families, communities, and societies. Participants were from Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Among them were Vabah Gayflor, Minister of Gender and Development in Liberia, and Hafsat Abiola, President of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy in Nigeria.