Africa: Women’s Voices Rise to Drive Sexual and Reproductive Rights Leadership

Nairobi, Kenya — Africa’s fight for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and gender equality has never been more urgent, as hard-won gains are increasingly threatened by shrinking civic spaces, rising political hostility, and the withdrawal of global funding. These pressures are creating widening gaps in national budgets and weakening the systems meant to protect the rights and dignity of young women, adolescents, and marginalized groups.

The continent cannot afford fragmented responses at a time when collective action and unified advocacy are essential. SRHR and gender justice need to remain at the core of Africa’s development agenda through strengthened networks, safeguarding civic space, and co-creating a forward-looking roadmap.

“We stand at a defining moment for Africa, a moment that demands clarity of purpose and bold leadership,” said Babirye Angel, President of the African Youth and Adolescent Network East and Southern Africa (AfriYAN ESA), addressing the Africa Regional Convening ahead of Women Deliver 2026.

“In less than five years, the world will reach the 2030 deadline for the SDGs and for the global commitment to universal access to SRHR,” she said. “Yet across the continent, there is a widening gap between our aspirations and the lived realities of communities, especially women, adolescents, people with disabilities, youth people in humanitarian settings, and LGBTQIA+ communities.”

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“Progress has been made, laws have been passed, and frameworks have been signed,” Angel said. “The Maputo Protocol, for example, remains one of the world’s strongest instruments for women’s rights, and yet the progress on paper is not the same as the progress in people’s lives.”

In 2003, the African Union adopted the Maputo Protocol, an important human rights treaty that establishes comprehensive rights for women and girls. It is one of the most progressive international human rights instruments, addressing civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, as well as reproductive health, gender equality, and the elimination of harmful practices like female genital mutilation.

Angel said that SRHR programmes remain underfunded at a time when civic space is shrinking, and donor support is being withdrawn. She cautioned that a growing and well-coordinated backlash is targeting gender equality, comprehensive sexuality education, and feminist leadership across the continent.

“The backlash against gender equality and bodily autonomy is really growing louder and better organised,” she said, citing restrictions on comprehensive sexuality education, rising misinformation, digital harassment, and the apparent blacklisting of feminist content on social media. “You go to platforms like Twitter, now called X,  and your content doesn’t even reach three people because it’s being blacklisted,” said Angel.

Drawing from her experience as a nurse in western Uganda, Angel described the extreme challenges faced by girls who lack access to menstrual products. “I found girls using soil and sand for their periods,” she said. “Some were even forced into transactional sex just to afford pads.”

Despite this, Angel said young people across Africa are refusing to remain silent. “African women and youth are not waiting to be invited into leadership. We are already doing the work,” she said.

She urged governments to prioritise domestic financing for SRHR and to strengthen accountability systems so that regional commitments like the Maputo Protocol translate into real change. Youth leadership, she added, must move beyond tokenism and become a core governance principle. We must defend the civic status that is shrinking so that we allow movements to breathe, organize, and thrive, she said.

“The future of SRHR in Africa will not be decided only in global capitals,” she said. “It will be shaped in communities, by movements led by women and young people who refuse to accept anything less than justice.”

Jemima Apisi, a 32-year-old deaf woman, mother of two, and advocate for deaf women, shared her experience navigating SRHR spaces as a young person with a disability. Apisi, who survived gender-based violence and now works as a peer educator with LVCT Health, said her advocacy is driven by her own journey through “mental and emotional trauma” and her commitment to supporting other deaf girls and women.

“Accessibility is a big issue… If there is no interpreter, you won’t know unless you start signing.”

She said that young people with disabilities face “a lot of missed opportunities” because they are often excluded from information and decision-making spaces. “We are not given information about where meetings are or what topics will be discussed,” she said. “We come without full knowledge, and for others we are seen as a liability, just there to tick boxes.”

Apisi said that accessibility remains one of the biggest barriers for deaf young people. “If there is no interpreter, you won’t know I’m deaf unless I start signing,” she said, adding that this invisibility means deaf participants are frequently overlooked. She said disability advocates in Kenya continue to push for sign language interpreters at all public meetings to ensure equal participation.

Young people with disabilities, Apisi said, must be included in spaces where policies affecting them are made, especially because they face higher risks of gender-based violence. She said that many adolescents with disabilities, especially girls aged 13–19, do not even know where to seek help and often assume violence is simply a part of life they have to go through. She added that harmful attitudes and bullying prevent many from expressing themselves freely. “Very few are able to speak up because they fear abuse,” she said. As a result, many “live in their own world” without access to critical information about their rights.

Calling for systematic change, Apisi called for stronger partnerships between disability organisations and mainstream institutions to improve support and awareness. “Information is critical,” she said. “When organisations work together, it becomes easier to ensure persons with disabilities are not left behind.”

Apisi said that for deaf women, access to accurate SRHR information is critical, alongside inclusive policies and active participation of persons with disabilities from family to national levels.

“Evidence becomes powerful when it has stories from the ground accompanying that evidence.”

Lilian Githuka, Global Director for Human Resources and Organisational Development at Pathfinder International, stressed the importance of coupling data with lived experience to drive meaningful change in SRHR.

Githuka shared a personal story about visiting a family in a grass-thatched house with her young son, recalling how his privileged perspective led him to see the situation simply as “culture.” She said the moment illustrated how evidence alone can obscure reality when the human story behind it is missing. “From his position of privilege, he saw it as a choice,” she said. “Unless people tell their stories, why they are in that position, what it means, how it impacts them, that evidence by itself means nothing.”

That childhood moment, she said, mirrors what happens in SRHR programming every day: researchers and donors collect numbers from a distance, but remain blind to the lived reality unless affected women, youth, and people with disabilities are given space to tell their own stories. “Evidence becomes powerful when it has stories from the ground accompanying it,” she said. “Every statistic and every structure has a human experience behind it.”

“Stories are powerful,” said Githuka. “They compel action, but they also elicit empathy – the empathy that we require to then direct the funding that is needed for people to bring change to their lives.”

She cited concrete Pathfinder International examples where pairing data with testimony transformed entire programmes. She pointed to digital storytelling in Oromia, Ethiopia, where youth-led initiatives have helped young people reclaim civic space by using stories alongside data dashboards to demand accountability and shape adolescent SRHR budgeting.  Githuka referenced work with women in aquaculture, where first-hand accounts revealed harmful practices on the shores of Lake Victoria, including “sex for fish” that had not surfaced through data alone. In Burkina Faso, she said maternal health data identified major gaps, but community stories were what “allowed citizens, especially women, to actively engage service providers and influence policy”.

She emphasised that stories are not only informative but catalytic. “Stories compel action, they elicit empathy, and they help direct the funding needed to transform lives,” she said.

Githuka said that Pathfinder is now expanding this approach through a new initiative, Women and Co, which brings women innovators together with leaders and changemakers. “Our role is to convene, bringing women to the table as social innovators and placing community experience at the centre of building lasting, sustainable solutions,” she said.

“If the policy doesn’t work on the ground, it doesn’t work at all.”

Mekides Berhanu Alemu, the Project Manager at Roots and Wings ELIXIR and a Women Deliver Emerging Leader, spoke about how storytelling and youth-led innovation can be scaled to influence SRHR policy and reclaim leadership spaces.

She began by grounding her perspective in her own lived experience. Growing up in the heart of Addis Ababa, “surrounded by the symbols of Pan-Africanism,” as she put it, she said she still faced the daily realities of poverty and political restriction. “Imagine being a young girl living in the shadow of government,” she said, recalling how she struggled to afford sanitary pads and wore the same school uniform month after month. “The personal impact of poverty gave me a deep understanding of what gender equality and gender justice really mean.”

This experience, she said, shaped her work with immigrants and people facing compounded vulnerabilities. Alemu stressed that visibility is the first step. “We have to make sure our stories are heard, seen, and understood,” she said.

She explained that traditional forms of storytelling are no longer enough, and we have to come up with a different and innovative way of storytelling.

“You don’t need to represent her. She can tell her story by herself.”

Alemu shared how she invited policymakers and government officials to a carnival to experience the girls’ creativity firsthand. “When they saw the girls perform, they were surprised,” she said. “They didn’t know the story inside. We must use new and innovative storytelling approaches that we haven’t used before.”

Beyond narrative, she said that scaling youth-led storytelling requires accessibility, prototypes, and evidence that policymakers can act on. She described a project she led to convert school textbooks into Ethiopian Sign Language so deaf learners could access education. “So far, we have converted 73 episodes of selected subjects,” she said. “We presented this to policymakers and government representatives to show that it is possible and that it can be scaled.”

Storytelling must be rooted in a system of exchange. If a policy doesn’t work on the ground, it doesn’t work at all, she said. She pointed to healthcare access for immigrants in Ethiopia: although the law does not prohibit it, communication barriers, such as the absence of sign-language-speaking staff, effectively deny services. Her team responded by training health workers in basic sign language to bridge the gap.

Alemu said that reclaiming leadership is also about returning voice and agency to those who have long been spoken for. “She has her own story. You don’t need to represent her – she can tell it herself,” she said.

Change narrative to create safe places

Catherine Chacha, GBV Prevention and Response Coordinator at Women in Global Health Kenya, shared her perspective on what feminist leadership looks like in practice, particularly in under-resourced and restrictive contexts.

Women’s leadership must begin at the community level, where terms like “feminist” and “feminism” may seem alien or taboo. She said she focuses on inclusion, participation, and empowerment instead of the word itself. “Inclusion comes in. Because it’s still feminism, it’s still feminist leadership, it still talks about inclusivity,” she said. She said that leaders must center the voices of women and girls at the lowest levels, such as community health promoters, who are often the first change-makers in their communities.

She explained the importance of co-creation as a practical approach, not just a buzzword. “When you talk about centering them, it means they are the center; their views are very, very important,” Chacha said, explaining that linked realities and personal experiences should inform policies and change efforts. She also called for a shift from traditional top-down leadership to models that recognize local impact: “We need to refuse the traditional model. Leadership comes from the bottom up.”

Chacha said empathy, integrity, and accountability as essential traits for feminist leaders. According to her, her work as a nurse taught her to “put myself in others’ shoes and ensure they are treated fairly.” She said the challenge of addressing harmful cultural norms, such as female genital mutilation, stressing that leaders must navigate these issues carefully while advocating for change.

She also spoke of the need for safe spaces, mentorship, and real, not symbolic, representation.

“We are not checking the boxes. We are capable of being there… we need to not be an afterthought, not symbolic, but create impact,” she said. Chacha said accountability mechanisms, including transparent feedback and mentorship, as critical for sustaining feminist leadership.

“Mentorship is just building a new generation…ensuring that this conversation will continue… tomorrow, next year, and we may deliver,” said Chacha.