Banner at Makerere University (photo by me)

This post brought to you by a number of excellent articles I’ve recently found highlighting women’s activism in Africa and elsewhere.

• I was put in mind of the banner above by this profile of Dr Sarah Nyendwoha Ntiro, another early female student at Makerere and the first woman from east or central Africa to graduate from Oxford.  “When Ntiro joined Makerere College … the male Maths lecturer advised her to ask for and go to where ‘female’ courses like knitting and tailoring were taught.”  She went on to push for women’s access to public education in Uganda and Kenya

• The African Feminism blog has an excellent selection of articles from writers based around the continent.  Pair with the fantastic, female-led Ayiba Magazine.  For a more academic take on gender issues, check out the Gender Matters blog run by economist S Anukriti

• I loved this piece on Ghanaian entrepreneur Afua Osei, who founded the She Leads Africa network to support other women in startups.  There’s a long history of women keeping markets running in Ghana.

• Also in Ghana, male traditional leaders have been given an expanded range of local powers, but Queen Mothers are now pushing for their own recognition.  Elsewhere in west Africa, hairdressers in Guinea are using their captive audiences during hours of braiding to share advice on contraception