Nice Leng’ete and the others: the alliance between women to support the female future in Africa (and beyond)

Female emancipation in Africa and Italy has a name and looks to the future. This was promised with great force by the title of the Amref event in Milan EmpowHer. Voices of women transforming the future. The event, on the occasion of the World Day of Violence against Women, presented an alliance between managers, philanthropists and artists (including Fiorella Mannoia) to support gender equality in Africa and Italy. Not just beautiful – and necessary – words but concrete facts, with an Empower Fund ready to contribute to equality and independence thanks to the healthcare NGO Amref Health Africa, which not only deals with health but with basic necessities such as access to ‘waterfall.

This was explained by the president of Amref Italy Paola Crestani: «This event aims to be an extraordinary opportunity to discuss, reflect and share. Change is possible when there are solid and shared alliances. EmpowHer was born with the ambitious aim of shining a spotlight on the importance of female empowerment in Africa, because Sub-Saharan Africa is the continent with the deepest and most entrenched gender inequalities: poverty, access to education, healthcare and economic tools directly influence the prosperity of the communities in which we live.” The Amref ambassador for women’s rights, who had already told Vanity Fair about her experience, Nice Leng’ete, is also founder of Nice Place Foundation and added: «We must put an end to child marriage and early pregnancies, stop female genital mutilation and allow girls and women to have the right to freedom, to decide for themselves, to education. Thank you all for this, we have a common vision, a common voice to save girls, not only in Kenya, in Africa, but everywhere. Save every girl and ensure that every girl from now on is free from any form of gender-based violence. People think that the opposite of poverty is wealth, but for me the opposite of poverty is justice.”

He echoes her Fiorella Mannoia: «The battle that is closest to my heart and hurts most in the work that Amref does is that against female genital mutilation. We know that change comes through women. We are betting on them. We must be many and united, only in this way can we change.”
There are also those who have suffered them first hand and today are spokespersons for this practice, as Cynthia Oningoi (Amref ambassador against female genital mutilation): «I have learned from my life that trauma causes trauma. After having suffered them – he concludes – in Kenya, I wanted to disappear, to die. Then I looked at my little sister and said to myself: if I’m no longer here, what will happen to her and other little girls like her? From there my life changed. I knew that only thanks to education, to study, the change in my community would come about. I started from there and today mine, our battle is stronger, it will go further.” This “pink network” of mutual support is a precious tool for prevention and action that passes through our country and reaches Africa so that no one person has rights for everyone.