‘An African Feminist Manifesto’

The Republic has evolved considerably since then; most obviously, I’m no longer the magazine’s only editor (we are now 13!) and our archive has only grown from the seven essays that comprised Women of Nowadays, to the 300+ essays we currently house. Our magazine has changed and is changing, and I’m excited to share some of these updates with you, beginning with our latest issue, An African Feminist Manifesto. This issue borrows its title from our headline essay, a format we will be adopting in future magazines. In the years since we published Women of Nowadays, feminism and the state of women’s rights across Africa has continued to dominate public discourse, inspiring some of the most transformational changes some of our countries have seen, and not without pushback. Ours is a time when feminist groups have become some of the most organized civic networks on the continent and are relied on by both men and women to seek changes on issues ranging from reproductive rights to police brutality. However, ours is equally a time when Africa still records some of the highest rates of femicide in the world, an era in which the biggest threats to women remain the men in their lives.

Not just here in Nigeria but globally, these are uncertain times. Experts in The Republic have written extensively on the ongoing trends among which are Nigeria’s worsening economic crisis, the advent of the era of multi-polarity as the West loses its grip on geo-politics, the persistence of COVID-19 and the worsening climate emergency. All of which, we gather, will have more severe ramifications for women.

It is against this backdrop that feminist scholar, Ololade Faniyi headlines this issue, with an essay that advocates for decolonial worldmaking rooted in African feminism. ‘The very attack on the word “decolonization” is reinforcing subhuman imaginaries,’ she writes, ‘and binding our bodies into ideological containment that is eerily similar to slave ships.’ What African feminism offers in our challenging times, she argues, is solidarity, the connection to ‘to a critical legacy that binds contemporary Black women to their ancestors who not only resisted slavery but created breaches of resistance within alien spaces of domination, and whose legacies continues to sustain the spiritual and material connections between Afro-diasporic people today.’

In line with our new format, this issue features authors writing on topics ranging from arts & culture to science and technology. Our Arts section includes a 50-year anniversary review of Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen, by Republic associate editor, Peace Onafuye. This section also includes an essay by Kéchi Nne Nomu (The Republic’s 2023 newcomer of the year) on Norwegian-Nigerian photographer, Frida Orupabo surreal, women-oriented collages; along with an extended review by Jamila Pereira of White Nanny, Black Child, Andy Mundy-Castle’s 2023 documentary on West African children who were fostered unofficially by white British families between 1955 and 1995.

In Business, Assumpta Audu profiles the comedian and filmmaker, Funke Akindele, whose 2023 film, A Tribe Called Judah, is the first and only Nollywood film to gross over N1 billion in box office sales. ‘Not only has [Akindele] consistently succeeded by evolving in line with industry trends,’ she writes, ‘in an era of doom scrolling, she has also solidified herself in Nigerian comedy and is increasingly expanding her reach beyond Nigeria’s shores.’

In Climate, Aby Sène writes on the 2023 watershed events in climate politics for Africa. These events include the first African Climate Summit and the number of carbon offset deals that many dubbed as green colonialism. According to Sène, ‘In 1986, Pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist revolutionary, Captain Thomas Sankara, delivered his famous speech, Imperialism is The Arsonist of Our Forests and Savannas, in which he denounced imperialism as the main driver of environmental destruction. Today, the climate crisis has become a pretext for imperialist economic expansion, leading to an urgent need to reorient the African climate justice agenda.’

In Culture, Oyindamola Depo-Oyedokun reports on Nigeria’s ongoing japa wave. This essay takes a unique approach to telling the all-too-familiar Japa story in Nigeria. Going beyond the numbers, this story takes the reader on a journey from earlier brain drain waves of the 80s-90s (with valuable first-hand insight from those who emigrated during that period) to our current brain drain wave. Depo-Oyedokun also explores the impact that emigration has had on relationships (be they familial, platonic or non-platonic), cultural assimilation and identity. She ends by looking at China and India, who have faced similar brain drains, and by considering what Nigeria can learn from their experiences.