By Wanja Maina
In June 2024, I found myself on the streets of Kenya, part of the Gen Z youth movement protesting a Finance Bill that sought to burden common goods with new taxes and drastically cut budgets for crucial social sectors, including support for disabled people.
The echoes of these protests, globally reported, resonated with similar demonstrations in 2023 against the soaring cost of Unga (maize flour) – a staple that serves as a barometer of our nation’s food security. In both instances, the names of the IMF and World Bank frequently emerged on placards, with one protester’s sign in 2024 boldly declaring, “IMF, World Bank, Stop the Modern Day Slavery.”
When the invitation arrived to represent Nalafem at the African #Femonomics Collective planning session in Mauritius, I was overwhelmed. The weight of representing young African women at such a high-level meeting brought with it a wave of imposter syndrome. “Will I be able to do enough in 5 days? Who will I be meeting? And how do all these international discussions connect to local realities?” I asked myself.
I’ve always been a critic of boardroom meetings, often perceiving them as theoretical and disconnected from the “ground.” Yet, here I was, headed to a boardroom to discuss and plan the future of economics with an African and feminist lens.
The concept note was dense with technical terms – epistemology, Eurocentric hypotheses, cis-heteropatriarchy, multi-level economic governance structure, financial architecture, alternative economic frameworks – terms that ChatGPT became my essential guide to understanding, and then translating into what they meant for a local African woman in my village.
Upon my arrival in Mauritius, I was struck by the island’s beautiful roads, vast sugarcane plantations, and its impressive welfare system. Public health, education, and transport for the retired and disabled are all provided free of charge, a stark contrast to some of the struggles we face back home.
As expected in a gathering of African feminists, the room was a vibrant tapestry of African print dresses, each one a testament to the diverse ideas, opinions, and perspectives that were about to converge. And as young African women shared stories of bloated administrative budgets for political elites and severe cuts to social sectors in their respective countries, my mind kept returning to Kenya’s 2025/26 Finance Bill. This bill, which increased administrative spending for political leaders (including State House renovations), simultaneously removed the Linda Mama (free maternity) program, cut KES 600M from the school feeding program impacting 50,000 children, and failed to provide additional allocation for the National Aids Control Programme despite a KES 9.4 billion gap.
My skepticism of boardroom discussions began to wane as I realized the crucial need for theoretical grounding in concepts like decolonialism and feminism. These frameworks are essential to effectively critique institutions like the IMF and World Bank, and to connect their global financial architecture to the immediate impact on a poor Kenyan woman who might be denied a dignified birth due to the lack of free maternity care. It was through understanding these complexities that I could fully grasp how over 50% of the monies we raise in this fiscal year would be allocated to debt repayment.
The conference achieved its primary goal: it served as a vital planning session for what will become Africa’s annual Femonomics conference. This yearly gathering will critically examine Africa’s financial architecture, explore diverse feminist alternatives and realities that extend beyond traditional realms such as academia, policy, and activism, while integrating all these modalities to achieve African women’s and girls’ socio-economic rights. Beyond the serious discussions, it was also an invaluable opportunity for relaxation, self-care, and learning from the experiences of others.
Africa’s annual Femonomics conference promises to truly reflect the voices of women and girls from the region, envisioning people-centered budgets and building an army of women and girls empowered to influence their respective governments and national fiscal policies. With the public resistance demonstrated by Kenyan Gen Z serving as a powerful example of demanding genuine sovereignty over public resources, the future, indeed, looks bright.
As I compiled this blog post, the news of renowned writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s passing reached me. I was reminded of his powerful book, Petals of Blood, where the main character, Wanja, declares, “They take our resources, our labor, and then they tell us we are lazy and deserve our poverty.” This statement perfectly encapsulates the colonial and neo-colonial narratives that often blame Africans for their struggles. The conference in Mauritius solidified my understanding of how labor, resources, and poverty disproportionately affect women.
Like Wanja in Ngugi’s book, women are often blamed for the challenges they face, with little regard for the broader context of a global financial system and multi-level economic governance structures that contribute to their oppression, exclusion, and marginalization within their economic rights.
But the same Wanja, in the same book, also asserts, “We are not just victims. We are survivors. And we will rise again, on our own terms.” This sentiment, a powerful call to resilience and self-determination, perfectly captures the spirit of the African #Femonomics Collective and the hopeful future we are building.
The content and concepts within this article are entirely my creation. I utilized Gemini AI for editorial support, specifically for correcting typos and enhancing readability
