Making a

FEMINIST INTERNET:
Movement building in a 
digital age in Africa
28-31 October 2019
South Africa

Report by Christy Zinn and Gorata Chengeta

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SPECIAL THANKS:
To all the organisations and individuals that participated in this event, to
facilitators Shamillah Wilson and Jac sm Kee, APC staff and interns, and to the
amazing rapporteurs Christy Zinn and Gorata Chengeta without whom this
report would not be possible. Making a feminist internet: Movement building in
a digital age in Africa was supported by funding from All Women Count and the
ENOUGH Campaign of Oxfam International.

CREDITS:
Coordination: Tigist Hussen and Erika Smith
Texts and edition: Christy Zinn and Gorata Chengeta
Editorial Design: Irene Soria
ISBN: 978-92-95113-21-3
APC Serial: APC-202005-WRP-R-EN DIGITAL-311

Making a feminist internet: Movement building in a digital age in

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction 5

2. Nothing without intention: Collective ethics

and accountability 6

3. Making a feminist internet in a digital age in

Africa: Day one 8
3.1 Remembering our early pleasures 9
3.2 From imagining to making: The FPIs
from our locations 13
3.3 Concluding day one 23

4. Making a feminist internet in a digital age in

Africa: Day two 24
4.1 The questions on our mind about… the
internet 24
4.2 Connecting the dots: Building our
collective story 27
4.3 Movement building in a digital age in
Africa 31
4.4 Concluding day two 35

5. Making a feminist internet in a digital age in

Africa: Day three 36
5.1 The questions on our mind about…
movement building 37
5.2 Surfacing the tensions within our movements 41

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 5.3 Ecosystem dialogue: How do we build a
movement when we have polarised
views? 42
5.4 Concluding day three 46

6. Making a feminist internet in a digital age in

Africa: Day four 47
6.1 Documenting a shared history 47
6.2 Conclusion of #MFIAfrica 48

7. Appendices 52
7.1 Transcription of Jan Moolman’s
welcome speech on “location”−
28 October 2019 52
7.2 Birthday poem to President Yoweri
Museveni by Dr. Stella Nyanzi 55
7.3 On the “M” Word by Caroline
Kouassiaman − 30 October 2019 57

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1. Introduction

From 28 to 31 October 2019, 54 feminists from 19 countries,

including Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
staff members, came together in Muldersdrift, South Africa,
to discuss “Making a Feminist Internet: Movement building in a
digital age in Africa.” The purpose of the convening, abbreviated
as #MFIAfrica, was to deepen the understanding of how the
digital landscape has affected feminist, women’s rights,
sexual rights and intersectional movement-building work;
strengthen the capacity of feminist, women’s rights, sexual
rights and digital security activists to respond to emerging
challenges and threats; and engage in the creation of collab‐
orative ideas and strategies on how to make a feminist internet
that can contribute towards building strong and resilient
movements.

The convening was made up of multiple facets of connection

and conversation between a participant group of African
feminists, diverse in geographical origin and field of work,
from the continent and African diaspora. This document
presents a perspective of those conversations, and is drawn
up from a diversity of materials that were created through‐
out the meeting duration, including text notes, photographs
and audio recordings. The convening was documented and
continues to be reflected upon by different people through
different mediums, and this report is a contribution to
#MFIAfrica’s multifaceted, decentralised archive of memory.

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 2.Nothing without
Intention:Collective 
ethics and accountability

In the opening session of #MFIAfrica, Shamillah Wilson

(South Africa), one of the facilitators of the convening, held
the space as we brought into being a shared agreement on
our principles for participation. We could not take for granted
that “our location as individuals is always intimate, deeply
personal, and political,”1 and we needed to understand the
expectations of others before we started grappling with the
very political and personal question of how technology is
changing the way we live, love and organise in our countries.
As we discussed our desires for the space, a few commonali‐
ties arose. We wanted, firstly, to be seen, through the experi‐
ence of mutual respect. This included the need to respect
gender pronouns, and be aware of the diversity of language
proficiencies among participants. Secondly, we wanted the
#MFIAfrica space to be one where we could be vulnerable
enough to learn and grow. In action, this would look like
putting curiosity before judgement, being open to learning,
Our location as and establishing a brave space, wherein difficult questions
individuals is always could be compassionately addressed. Thirdly, we anticipated
that in a group where there was a plurality of nationalities,
intimate, deeply experiences, skillsets and expressions of feminisms, we
personal, and political. would disagree. Jenny Radloff (South Africa) from APC

1Jan Moolman-Monare (South Africa), from APC, in her welcome speech on day
one of the #MFIAfrica convening. The transcription of her speech is included in
the appendices to this report.

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addressed this by suggesting some of the principles of
participation developed at previous APC convenings. These
included approaching disagreements, for example, by opening
up rather than shutting down, and taking as much time as
needed to work through the disagreement.

There was also no shying away from the political. We held

that it was important to consider how our individual priv-
ileges were at play in the space, such as those pertaining to
race, gender and access to information. We wanted to be
explicit about the politics guiding us, and so naming
#MFIAfrica a “feminist” space was something suggested as a
means of creating a comfortable environment. Fostering
connection also emerged as a shared desire, which included
the intent to have fun, loosen up, to enjoy music and dance
together. Finally, the conversation reflected a common need

7
to feel safe. Jenny spoke on the importance of respecting
privacy, and on the importance for people to not be pres‐
sured into sharing stories they were not ready to share. We
also collectively acknowledged that “consent is a continuum,”
and came to an agreement on a few guidelines for social
media posting regarding the event.

3. Making a feminist 
internet in a digital 
age in Africa:Day one

Day one’s sessions delved into understanding that there exists

a relationship between power, the internet and ourselves (our
bodies). The energisers and activities throughout the day
creatively wove a deeper understanding among participants
of how our physical selves are impacted by the political
nature of the internet, which affects our engagement both
with others online, and with the internet itself. This theme
was explored through thinking about what gives us pleasure
and our pleasure associations online – remembering the first
time we used technology and what keeps us coming back
for more. It was also explored through an introduction to
the Feminist Principles of the Internet (FPIs),2 and taking a
deeper look into how we see the principles of “access,”
“expression,” “movements,” “economy” and “embodiment”
play out in our own contexts.

2 https://feministinternet.org

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A feminist internet… During conversations, a number of tensions about the inter‐
net were raised, and accounts of criminalisation, censorship,
looks like a variety
surveillance, exploitation, and the unequal representation of
of bodies, abilities, voices became the drivers of conversations looking into key
capacities, challenges. As these issues were addressed, the internet
was also recognised as a tool for strengthening solidarity,
knowledges and
pushing for policy change and amplifying alternative narratives.
experiences It
embodies collectivism
3.1 Remembering our early 
and collaboration. pleasures

Facilitator Jac sm Kee (Malaysia) led us into the first activity

of the day with a spirit of silliness. Our laughter permeated
through the conference room as Jac prompted us to greet
each other by winking, touching elbows and touching hips.
Splitting into groups, we were then tasked with reflecting
on what our earliest experiences of the internet were. This
would be a starting point for thinking about our relationship
with the internet. We then set about drawing avatars that
illustrated that. Despite the diversity across the groups, this
exercise evoked nostalgia, as it brought out similarities
across location.

One of the first groups to showcase their avatar used a butterfly

ᾘ to represent the early pleasures of being on the internet
and the crushes we had. Another group drew Pac-Man
alongside their avatar to represent the games we played
Ἲᾓ♀ online.

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We spoke about our Another group added that the internet was a “window for
freedom and power,” for “dream and escape.”
first interactions on
the internet and A commonality across groups was the importance of the
what came up was information we found and shared through the internet. One
of the groups symbolised this by drawing a book to repre‐
porn… We were
sent the brain ᾞὍ. They said, “The mind is like an endless
looking for boobs! book. It never really gets filled… We use Twitter, Facebook
and YouTube to upload and download, to upload into the
‘mind’ and learn more.”

Almost all of the groups commented on finding community

online as a key part of their first experiences. The internet is
where many first heard about “feminisms, plural” and about
activism. It is where we first participated in consciousness
raising ✊Ἷ✊Ἷ✊Ἷ about the issues that are important to
us. It is where we could connect to all kinds of diverse
communities, and extend love ❤ and support to one another.

Our early memories of the internet were also of being

stimulated, as one group depicted by drawing loins on fire
ὒὒὒ. “We spoke about our first interactions on the
internet and what came up was porn… We were looking for
boobs!” one group representative said. They explained how
they used search engines to ask, “Am I normal?” seeking
answers about sexuality, queer attractions and pleasure
ὠὄ.

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For many of us, the internet was also one of the primary
spaces through which we started to value and affirm our‐
selves. Kim M.Reynolds (USA/South Africa), reporting back
from her group’s discussion, said, “We talked about self-
documentation, like taking selfies: what does it mean to
look at your body and to see what’s looking back at you?”
They spoke about the internet as a site where they could
begin to deconstruct things like “gender, beauty, sex and
whiteness.”

As the groups continued to share their reflections, themes

of safety also emerged. One group had given their avatar an
AK47: a reference to arming ourselves with knowledge
through the internet, and also to the harm and violence we
face online. Another group drew a lock and key over their
avatar’s heart ὑ❤ to show that our relationships with
power and technology are “guarded,” citing the dynamics of
care and control at play. They also spoke to the issue of
consent and privacy, using shackles ⛓ to represent a lack
of control over online data. Sheena Magenya (Kenya) from

11
We must remember APC said, “We see the hegemony of social media, not its
everyday use, as a bit of a shackle. They collect a lot of our
that memory is
information, and we don’t know what they do with it… it
political. feels like it’s slowing us down.”

While we could gain new freedoms through the internet,

there were also several challenges in terms of expression.
One group used a skull ☠ to signify the experience of getting
blocked, banned and censored for their expressions. It was
pointed out that often censorship is gendered, that there
are harsher penalties for posting images of women’s nipples
than there are for sending unsolicited dick pics.

Several groups touched on the issue of money and access.

One group used dollar signs ὋὋὋ to represent the dynamic:
“The internet allows me to make money, but it also costs
me money.” A second group referred more specifically to
how money shapes who can access the internet and who
cannot, and how access to the internet is a privilege. “The
little stick figure [we’ve drawn in the corner] is isolated but
looking in ὄ [to represent those who] don’t have access.”

Wrapping up the exercise, Jac said, "We must remember

that memory is political. Sometimes we need to just go
back to a memory and ask ‘What was it that gave us pleasure,
that reminded us that this is something we could share,
transform and leverage?’" Jac’s words speak to the concept
of “Pleasure Activism,” which adrienne maree brown out‐
lines in a book by the same title. Brown writes, “Pleasure

12
activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and
satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limita‐
tions of oppression and/or supremacy.”3 Considering plea‐
sure in our early experience was a helpful lens through
which we could see why the internet matters to us. Seyi
Akiwowo (United Kingdom) said, “It was really easy for us
to talk about how bad [the internet] was, but actually, there
were good times and it’s because of the good times that we
stay on the internet.”

Jac outlined that a similar ethos to that of pleasure activism

is what led to the “Imagine a Feminist Internet” convening in
2014. “As feminists, we're very good at saying what we
don't like… We give ourselves less permission to imagine
what we do want, to say, ‘This is the internet we want.’” It
was in that meeting that the Feminist Principles of the
Internet (FPIs) came about.

3.2 From imagining to making: 
The FPIs from our locations 

Before we could start making a feminist internet, we had to

imagine what it could look like. After a panel of APC staff
members introduced us to the FPIs, we were given the
chance to do our own audit of how the FPIs play out in our
contexts. Participants were split into different groups to
discuss the principles of access, economy, expression,
embodiment and movements.

3brown, a. m. (2019). Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. AK

Press. https://www.akpress.org/pleasure-activism.html 13
3.2.1 The many facets of access

The principle of access is multifaceted. It is not just about the

cost of the internet, including the cost of data bundles, Wi-Fi
connections and smartphones. As Tigist Hussen (Ethiopia)
from APC mentioned, it is also about “content and applica‐
tions, culture and society, and governance and decision
making.” Jan added that often, the development narratives
around the concept of internet access frame it as an all-
encompassing solution to a myriad of social ills. Yet projects
on the development of information and communication tech‐
nologies (ICTs) have mostly reproduced these inequalities,
further harming marginalised groups.

4IR (the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution), for example,

a trending topic in global internet governance spaces, and
described by one participant as “an extension of colonialism,”
has never been associated with people living in poverty, the
working class, and people on the margins. While Tigist spoke
about access, she noted that there are significant infrastruc‐
tural challenges that persist in Africa, which means that the
needs relating to access are starkly diverse in different parts
of the region. Furthermore, this disparity is reproduced across
the gender divide as well as across the urban-rural divide in
many countries.

Access to the internet is one thing, yet access to online

content is another. Without progressive legal frameworks and
policies, efforts to increase access to online content are not
guaranteed to widen access. And even when policies are

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The realities of there, poor policy implementation was noted as one of the
problems. Furthermore, geo-blocking4 and paywalls5
precarity and
restrict us from accessing certain content on the internet. We
exploitation in the came to understand that open-access platforms and user-
digital economy generated content are vital for a feminist internet in Africa. If
we have the power to shape the internet, we can use it to
were key issues in
highlight counter-narratives that speak to our locations and
these discussions. experiences.

Lastly, as we work towards open, unrestricted access, we

need to consider what access looks like for marginalised groups.
For example, one of the present challenges that queer people
face is the risk of being outed online. Moreover, current con‐
ventional mechanisms for engaging with the internet per-
petuate ableism. Tshego Senne (South Africa) shared her ex‐
perience of often being asked by her readers, “Please don't
use these sorts of characters, because my voice reader can't
interpret this,” or, “Please make sure you put an image de‐
scription on every picture so that people that have limited
visibility can access it.”

3.2.2 The digital economy: A hot mess 

The realities of precarity and exploitation in the digital econ‐

omy were key issues in these discussions. Contributing to
this reflection were case studies of outsourcing platforms
such as Uber and Airbnb, which have failed to disrupt the
logic of neoliberalism. For instance, as Wilf Mwangi (Kenya)
said, Uber and similar applications (apps) are marketed
positively as enterprises that benefit the client and the driver

4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geo-blocking
5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paywall

15
Reimagining labour mutually. While the emergence of ride-sharing apps has
created opportunities for employment, this has been
from a lens of solidarity
accompanied by the erosion of socioeconomic benefits.
and community. Drivers who use ride-sharing apps are seen as contractors,
not employees of the company, and therefore do not have
legal protection or employee rights, and consequently have
to form unions.

Another primary concern was the commodification of data,

and the sale of users’ online data to advertisers, without
express consent. Kim and Sally AlHaq highlighted cases
across the globe where social media platform owners and
health-tracking app developers were profiting from user
data by selling it to third parties. Further concerns were
also raised around the ownership and regulation of mobile
money platforms. These services enjoy widespread use, but
are vulnerable to regulation and remain under the control of
mobile network company oligarchies. In Zimbabwe, for ex‐
ample, the government can ban certain amounts from being
transferred through the Ecocash6 mobile money platform.
Strategies for confronting these challenges included
transnational advocacy and investing in alternative, trans‐
parent apps and platforms. Wilf said there was an oppor-
tunity for “reimagining labour from a lens of solidarity and
community."

6 https://twitter.com/EcoCashZW

16
3.2.3 The battle over expression

Our capacity to express ourselves online is the backbone of

our activism. The online space allows many of us to express
ourselves in ways we cannot in offline spaces. At the same
time, the online landscape of expression is undivorceable
from the offline cultural contexts. Feminist activists who are
vocal and push back against patriarchal structures often
face harassment and other attempts of silencing, including
criminalisation. There is also a culture of self-censorship in
many online communities where there exists “sensitivity
around what should be said, what should not be said, and
how things should be said,” Seyi suggested.

17
In terms of sexual expression, there are an array of African
countries in which any kind of love that is not heterosexual
is illegal to express, and such expression often incites
violence. Organisations and individuals participating in the
campaign to repeal Section 1627 of Kenya’s penal code, for
example, were met with violent backlash online by anti-gay
communities. LGBTQ persons living in countries with anti-
gay laws end up curating their online presence in ways that
protect themselves and their communities from violence.
One participant, for example, mentioned that cases in Senegal
have been reported of LGBTQ persons being arrested and
demanded by police to show the contact list on their
phones, in order for this information to be used to target
other members of the LGBTQ community.

The case of Ugandan activist Stella Nyanzi8 was brought

forward as an example of how Uganda is cracking down on
political expression online. She was convicted and imprisoned
under the country’s Computer Misuse Act (2011), a law
which Amnesty International says “has been used

7Collison, C. (2019, 24 May). Kenya high court will not repeal anti-LGBT law.
Mail & Guardian. https://mg.co.za/article/2019-05-24-kenya-high-court-will-
not-repeal-anti-lgbt-law/ See also #repeal162 on Twitter.
8Dr. Stella Nyanzi is a Ugandan university lecturer who was jailed on charges

of “cyber harassment” and “offensive communication” for a poem she wrote

about Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. In an effort to keep the case in
the public eye, activists from across the region continue to organise and show
their solidarity to Nyanzi through the #freestellanyanzi campaign. The poem
in question is included in the appendices to this report. For more information,
see The Observer. (2017, 10 April). Nyanzi charged after calling Museveni 'a
pair of buttocks'. https://observer.ug/news/headlines/52240-nyanzi-charged-
with-calling-museveni-a-pair-of-buttocks

18
systematically to harass, intimidate and stifle government
critics.”9 Given the extent to which social media platforms
create space for expression, it is alarming that Uganda has
also proposed a tax on the use of social media, which was
considered by one of the Ugandan participants as a way of
curtailing expression.

Furthermore, defamation charges are also being increas‐

ingly used as a tool to criminalise women and queer per‐
sons naming their perpetrators. We witnessed the case of
Kenyan writer Shailja Patel10 and her co-accused, who
received a court order to pay USD 87,000 in damages to
her perpetrator, who she named on Twitter, and who sub‐
sequently laid defamation charges against her. In South
Africa, a number of anonymous Twitter accounts were cre‐
ated in response to the #AmINext movement, which
emerged from heightened civil anxiety and unrest sparked
by the rape and murder of university student Uyinene
Mrwetyana.11 These accounts offered a space of recourse
for survivors to direct message (DM) their stories, the con‐
tent of which would in turn be posted in public anony‐
mously. However, the creators of these accounts were then
threatened with legal action on the grounds of defamation.

9Amnesty International. (2019, 2 August). Uganda: Freedom of expression

takes a knock as Stella Nyanzi found guilty of cyber harassment. https://
www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/08/uganda-freedom-of-expression-
takes-a-knock-as-stella-nyanzi-found-guilty-of-cyber-harassment
10Griffin, T. (2019, 5 September). She Was Ordered To Pay Damages And

Apologize To The Man Who Allegedly Assaulted Her — So She Left The
Country. BuzzFeed. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tamerragriffin/
shailja-patel-defamation-sexual-assault-kenya-exile
11For more information on the case of Uyinene Mrwetyana, and the

subsequent creation of anonymous Twitter accounts, see Karrim, A. (2019, 4

September). Twitter users name and shame alleged rapists, but experts issue
stern warning. News24. https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/twitter-
users-name-and-shame-alleged-rapists-but-experts-issue-stern-warning-
19
To circumvent attempts of silencing, opportunities were
identified in using alternative platforms for expression, such
as user-generated blog pages and podcasts. Art as a tool for
sexual expression was identified as well. Also recognised was
the need to support and amplify the work of existing plat‐
forms that provide alternative narratives, such as HOLAA!12
and Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women.13

12http://holaafrica.org
13https://adventuresfrom.com

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3.2.4 Embodiment: Our rights to
autonomy,consent and memory14

The challenges to acquiring our rights to autonomy, consent

and memory online are shaped by what happens offline.
Various societal groups eagerly take up their self-acclaimed
responsibility of policing our bodies, and include groups such
as national media authorities, independent organisations and
citizens themselves. Kenyan participants spoke of the recent
online campaign, #ifikiewazazi,15 where Kenyan citizens
were using the hashtag to share posts and shame teenagers
taking pictures of themselves with their lovers, with the idea
that, if the posts are shared widely enough, they will eventu‐
ally reach the parents. Independent Islamic non-governmental
organisation (NGO) Jamra, based in Senegal, self- identifies as
a “moral keeper” of the country. They call out “immoral” be‐
haviour, and, as Claire Ba (Senegal) noted, “often cherry pick
‘scandalous’ content, thus distracting public attention from
pressing social issues.”

In addition, government and private surveillance is increas‐

ingly threatening citizens’ rights to privacy and anonymity.
The Kenyan government, for example, has recently requested
all Kenyan citizens to register themselves onto a national
integrated identity management system in order to acquire a

14 The term “embodiment” is used to describe one of the FPI clusters. During a
break-out group session, participants expressed surprise about the use of this
term. “I’ve never heard it used in this context,” said one participant from
Senegal. “The term embodiment is so removed. It feels like the first time I am
hearing it,” said one participant from Kenya. The conversation progressed to
describe how the word “embodiment” is usually used, in both countries, in a
spiritual context, such as when “a spirit is taking over you.”
15 Translated to, “Let it reach the parents.”

21
personalised “Huduma Namba,”16 through which all docu‐
mentation of an individual citizen can be accessed. What was
of concern was that there is no law currently protecting the
privacy of personal data in Kenya, and citizens are being
threatened with loss of access to all public services should
they not comply.17

Thinking about how we can resist breaches of consent and

confront different forms of violence, one participant noted
that we should commit to stopping the circulation of so-called
“revenge porn.” Ayak Chol Deng Alak (South Sudan) shared
an experience she had of changing the narrative around non-
consensually distributed explicit content. During an instance
of leaked pornographic content in South Sudan, feminists
within the country changed the narrative by directing the shame
away from the woman in the video and redirecting it towards
the man. The effect was a drastic slowing down of the circu‐
lation of the video. At the same time, we need to continue
taking steps at a systemic level towards ending the violence
altogether. As Vivian Ouya (Kenya) interjected, “What happens
if you don’t want to reclaim your nudes?”

16https://www.hudumanamba.go.ke
17Mungai, C. (2019, 6 August). Kenya's Huduma: Data commodification and
government tyranny. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/
kenya-huduma-data-commodification-government-tyranny-

22
3.2.5 Confronting erasure and other 
challenges to our political
movements

In discussions around movement building, the lack of repre‐

sentation of voices was a regularly mentioned concern. The
erasure of activist labour, especially online activist labour,
was brought to the fore. Not recognising activism as work
can often be a form of exploitation by more powerful,
transnational organisations, who appropriate grassroots
activism. In addition, we discussed the lack of representa‐
tion of voices from the diaspora in conversations about
movement building on the continent, while at the same
time, recognising that more work can be done by the dias‐
pora to visibilise and amplify work happening on the continent.

3.3 Concluding day one

The first day brought home the idea that the internet is
political, and furthermore, that the political is gendered, as
opportunity was given to consider how the internet is linked
to power through a feminist lens. Conversations around
government censorship, the criminalisation of sexual
expression, defamation, surveillance and exploitation of
labour raised many examples of African women and queer
persons being affected by these silencing mechanisms.
Through in-depth conversations around the FPI clusters of
access, economy, expression, embodiment and movements
in our contexts, the opportunities that the internet provides
us in enhancing our ability to organise, find solidarity and
build alternative narratives were also recognised.

23
 4. Making a Feminist 
Internet in Africa: 
Day two

Day two set out to explore the notion of movement building

in a digital age. It also gave us the opportunity to place our‐
selves, our organisations, as well as others, in our move‐
ments’ histories, in terms of our roles and impact, through
the creation of an interactive timeline. With concepts of
building solidarity and accountability in feminist leadership
setting the undertones for conversations throughout the
day, questions of power distribution and the internal infra‐
structure of our organisations presented strong tensions in
How do we discussions around privilege and access, organisational
acknowledge the leadership, and the aspects of our work that cause solidarity
ties to untether. A key theme that emerged from these con‐
ways in which the
versations was the distribution of power within movements
internet is for us, – who holds more power, how we can harness the power of
recognising that those around us, and how we can use our own power to
amplify voices that are otherwise marginalised.
even though it
wasn’t created for
us, and won’t be
4.1 The questions on our 
mind about… the internet
aligning with our
political agenda, it
On the morning of day two, participants were asked to
is meant for us to think of a topic they wanted to discuss, frame it as a ques‐
be in it? tion, and then write it on a piece of paper. The questions

24
“It’s like you’ve were then read out and all members of the convening had a
chance to vote for the topics they thought should be dis‐
entered this house
cussed.18 Among the questions chosen were the following:
to live and there are
these beams and
4.1.1.How do we hold ourselves and our 
structures and you communities accountable in online
don’t question why spaces? 
those beams and
This discussion raised the concern of reproducing the violent
structures are there. logics of patriarchy, white supremacy and other oppressive
We just wanted to systems in the ways we hold each other to account. We wit‐
nessed the case of student protests in South Africa, in which
get in.”
certain individuals and political factions claimed leadership
and decision-making power by dismissing the validity and
voices of others. One participant from Algeria shared her
experience of working in movements that revolve around a
singular person as a leader, which kindles the feeling that “if
that person is absent, the movement sleeps.” One participant
from the African diaspora suggested that, even within femi‐
nist movements, we look for saviourism, we want to have
feminist heroes that we look up to. As a result, we breed the
culture of “cancelling” other feminists for the things they say
online, instead of giving them the space to walk their journey.
We hold each other accountable in unkind ways. Without
kindness, it is difficult to foster an environment where femi‐
nists have room to make mistakes and grow from them.

18We called this methodology of establishing which topics to discuss an “open

space” event.

25
4.1.2 What does queer digital
embodiment look like?

This group discussed the politics of the online space when

it comes to queer visibility, questioning whose bodies are
most visible online. The group cited the dominance of
Western queer representation online. One of the insights
from this discussion was that there needs to be queer visibility
that centres Africans in the online space. Visibility needs to
be inclusive of queer people across generations, and needs
to counter homogenising narratives of what African queer‐
ness looks like.

4.1.3 How do we organise around shared 
struggles across the continent and 
tackle disparities of visibility
between online movements?

The underrepresentation of certain voices in our move‐

ments happens along lines of gender, religion and culture,
affecting people who live in conflict areas or rural areas

26
most. These disparities are perpetuated due to the role of
NGO (and other) funders, whose agendas may lead to unequal
distribution of resources.

This systematises the unequal access to power among citizens,

as well as among activist communities who consider them‐
selves part of a national social justice movement. While par‐
ticipants made it very clear that there are “no ifs, no buts”19
where it comes to our responsibilities as feminists, it was si‐
multaneously apparent that our so-called feminist organisa‐
tions and collaborations are still housed in patriarchal
organisational infrastructure that jeopardises our feminist
commitments to inclusion and the redistribution of power.

4.2 Connecting the dots: 
Building our collective story

After the open space event, Jenny brought us to the front of

the conference room where a long line of poster paper was
pinned across the wall. The APC team had created a physical
timeline, marking important dates, key moments and people
in the global history of technology, the internet and human
rights developments. Jenny explained APC’s role in bringing
women’s rights issues to the table in international decision
making spaces about internet governance and human rights,
and showed us when technology started to be included as a
necessary consideration in human rights decision making at
the global level.

19 Another participant would phrase the same concept one day later as,
“Feminism is not an a la carte menu.” These were just some of the many
versions of the notion “feminist practice must include…”, which was a notion
reiterated throughout the convening.
27
In the early to Post-it notes of different colours were used to mark global
points, particular movements in African activism, and the in‐
mid-2000s, where
fluence of APC’s Women’s Rights Programme. One of the
feminists were first things we noticed was how women and gender diverse
insisting on the idea people had often been written out of the history of technology.
The timeline was an opportunity to write individuals back in,
that technology is
by actively writing their name and placing it on the timeline.
political and crucial for The timeline also revealed how the development of certain
human development, institutions had brought about alternative online platforms
on the African continent to counter the barriers to access of
actively driving the
those institutions. For example, we could see how the start
agenda for a feminist of online banking facilities in Africa and infrastructural and
internet. social barriers to access led to the development of M-pesa.20

The timeline awakened memories for some of the feminists

in the room that were around at the time of the 1995 World
Conference on Women in Beijing, where APC had a tent at
the conference for participants to learn about email. Stories
were shared about global convenings such as the World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the launch
of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in the early to
mid-2000s, where feminists were insisting on the idea that
technology is political and crucial for human development,
actively driving the agenda for a feminist internet. We ac‐
knowledged organisations such as Women’sNet, founded in
1998, and the Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET),
founded in 2000, which were among the first organisations
in Africa to start including technology as a part of their
women’s rights work.

20https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

28
We heard about the projects APC initiated, such as Take Back
the Tech!21 in 2006, as a way of pushing back against the
misunderstanding that technology development is coming
from the global North. As Jac said, “These are important
pieces of history that we must claim.” Development was not
only coming from the “nipple” that is the United States and
Western Europe. Many initiatives at the intersection of “art,
tech, activism and feminism” were coming from the global South.

The conversation led us through the first link made between

technology and sexual harassment in South Africa in 2009, to
increasingly stronger connections being made between ex-
periences of sexual and gender-based violence and the rise of
social media.22 We also looked into how introducing a queer
lens to the intersection of technology and human rights in
2008 influenced its development. Queering decision making
spaces meant that conversations had to consider how sexual‐
ity, sex work and sexual and reproductive health and rights
are affected. While other lenses tended to lean towards the
idea of shutting down freedoms for the sake of “safety” and
“protection,” queer activists would insist on the importance
of opening it up and keeping freedoms available for all.

We collectively listened and contributed to the stories about

our movements, as we worked our way through the timeline
to the present, and to #MFIAfrica. At this critical moment,
the APC team invited participants to add their own organisa‐
tions and moments of activism to the timeline. Some partici‐
pants added key points in their region’s history of human
rights development. Some participants included moments of

21https://www.takebackthetech.net
22For example, the Facebook Rape Campaign that started in 2011. See also
#FBRape on Twitter.
29
change, such as the first internet shutdown in their country,
or an influential law that was passed in their country. Others
took a story about a moment in their activism that led them
to contribute to the movement in the way that they do, and
added it to the timeline.

The activity led to powerful acts of writing our history, and

placing ourselves and those we know in our socio-political
contexts. It also gave way to knowledge exchange through
storytelling, and helped us to understand how our struggles
interlink.

30
 4.3 Movement building in a 
digital age in Africa

The timeline exercise set the scene for Jac’s presentation on

movement building in a digital age, and what this looks like
on the continent. The internet has already facilitated multi‐
tudes of African-led campaigns for social change: despite
challenges, the internet space is being used to mobilise and
fuel public participation in the political sphere. Ayak shared
one example from her context, explaining how activists in
South Sudan used “e-delegates” participating in one particu‐
lar peacemaking process to feed information about what
was happening in the room to activists on the ground. By
creating this feedback loop, activists were able to build
pressure in real time to bring the warring parties to a ceasefire
agreement.

A movement has different components, and so building one

that sustainably agitates for political change needs to give
space to these. Being outraged, building community, devel‐
oping political vision and taking collaborative action, as Jac
outlined, are a few of the essential ingredients in the recipe
for online activism. It is also vital to have strong offline
The internet has support structures, to be able to withstand the backlash
already facilitated that comes with political resistance.
multitudes of
Aside from giving space for action, it is also important to
African-led campaigns recognise the various players within a political movement,
for social change. all of which need structures for accountability, support and care.

31
Jac gave the example of a network of Malaysian feminists
who mobilised against trolls attacking a young activist fol‐
lowing her participation in an International Women’s Day
campaign. Feminists came together and were able to iden‐
tify ways to support an actor whose visibility was height‐
ened. At the same time, not all actors in social movements
are always visible. For instance, alongside activists, organi‐
sations and content creators, there are translators, techies
and “free radicals,” who move in and out of activist spaces.
How do we build support structures that can reach all of
these actors as well?

One of the key issues arising in the discussion after Jac’s

presentation related to building trust. Yara said, “In some
movements I work with, [there’s] one person leading. This
creates a conflict relationship rather than a trust relationship.

32
“The major problem How can we move to relationships of trust rather than talk‐
ing about ‘horizontal organising’?”
is that the decision
making bodies are For Vivian Ouya and Miriam Obara, the challenge was build‐
promoting normality ing trust and relationships across differences. Vivian said
she was struggling particularly with forming alliances with
instead of diversity.
organisations that are reluctant to embrace feminist ideals.
In our countries, we She said that some women’s rights organisations in Kenya
are not the norm.” are “literally scared of engaging the conversation around
body politics, sexuality, abortion and things like that.”
 
The difficulty of organising across differences was echoed
by Sally AlHaq, who reflected on feeling isolated in her
country. She said, "I find myself where we are in tiny groups
of people agreeing with each other, but I cannot by any means
connect with the idea of a national movement in my coun‐
try. I feel that [connection] more internationally.” She con‐
tinued, “It makes me think, ‘If I do not have the luxury to
connect [internationally], what is my feminist root in my
country? What strengthens me to want to go back home
and change the reality?’"

This resonated with Yara Rim Menia (Algeria), who responded,

“I think I have more in common with her than with my
neighbour in my country.” Yara added, “The major problem
is that the decision-making bodies are promoting normality
instead of diversity. In our countries, we are not the norm.”

Ayak brought up the difficulty of sustaining activism and

avoiding burnout when one is involved in multiple nodes of

33
activism: “You find yourself squeezed but also [you’re] mis‐
understood – the expectations are too much – but some‐
how you have this crucial link, because you can go all the
way to the rural village and speak in local dialect and then
go to New York and speak at a UN Peace and Security
Council [meeting].” She asked, “How do you sustain nodes
but also capacitate others?” Ayak also cautioned, "We need
to be conscious of the fact that the activism in conflict areas
and the security threats are different. Sustaining activism in
that space is more difficult." 

Nyx McLean (South Africa) prompted us to think of more

sustainable models for creating community. They said, “We
sometimes might push to craft community and we hold
onto it very tightly.” This way of forming community can be
unsustainable, as it does not give people time to recuper‐
ate. Nyx proposed the alternative concept of “wispy community.”23
“It allows for sustainability because you know you’re coming
together [at certain points] and then returning into your
spaces to rest and recover,” Nyx said.

23Fine, G. A., & van den Scott, L.-J. (2011). Wispy Communities: Transient
Gatherings and Imagined Micro-Communities. American Behavioral Scientist,
55(10), 1319-1335. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764211409379
34
4.4 Concluding day two

Defining movement building as relationship building opened

up conversations around the distribution of power, account‐
ability mechanisms and strategies towards strengthening
solidarity within our movements. Despite our feminist inten‐
tions, the pervasiveness of patriarchal leadership structures
became clear as we discussed our experiences of organisa‐
tional work. Siloed campaigning, fractures in the movement
due to in-fighting, and burnout were some of the key threats
to feminist movements across the continent. Through discussions
around trust and strengthening solidarity, coalition leadership
structures, cross-border and cross-campaign collaboration
and allied support were considered essential for advocacy.

35
 5. Making a feminist 
internet in a digital 
age in Africa:Day 
three

How identities, including racial identities, are named and

represented affects the way we organise and find commu‐
nity. Conversations arising during day three problematised
the notion of inclusion in feminist work, confronting the
tension that certain actors exist and identify themselves as
being a part of our movements, when simultaneously we do
not acknowledge or seek to visibilise their struggles. The
notion of inclusion deeply informed conversations arising
from the open space event, and was further addressed in
exercises such as the ecosystem dialogue. Sessions created
space to speak about tensions of exclusion even in the
room, while also affirming participants’ place in the African
and global digital rights and feminist movements through
the sharing of our stories around artefacts that represent
Feminism is not an a for us personally tangible points of connection between
la carte menu. ourselves and our movements.

36
5.1 The questions on our 
mind about… movement 
building 

The third day started with a spitting, beating bang as Caroline

Kouassiaman opened the floor with an original piece of spo‐
ken word, titled “On the ‘M’ Word,”24 inspired by our ses‐
sions on movements the previous day. Following the
high-spirited cheering that resounded enthusiastically
across the room for her performance, we spent the rest of
the morning in another dynamic open space session. The
topics focused on movement building, and were chosen by
the APC team based on the previous day’s discussion. Some
of them were:

5.1.1 Beyond labels and identity politics: 
Strategies for diversity and inclusion 

In this discussion, the merits and faults of organising

through identity politics frameworks were unpacked. The
group found that identity politics is needed to open up con‐
versations about power and privilege, but cannot be the
only thing we look to in order to drive change, due to its
narrow framework. In order to drive structural change, we
need to move beyond considering single issues.

24 See the appendices for a full transcription.

37
5.1.2 Weaving online and offline 
organising in Africa 

This group spoke about how to merge offline and online

movements in the region, for the benefit of all. In thinking
through the financial challenges experienced by collectives,
the group proposed moving away from the competitive
mentality that organisations so often have about one another,
and instead, sharing resources, ideas and skills across or‐
ganisations.

In addition, the group highlighted the opportunity to

strengthen our resistance efforts by examining strategies of
resistance that have historically been successful in other
contexts. We considered the examples of #internetfreedomAfrica
and #keepiton as African movements that consisted of
scattered collaborations across the continent. How can we
unwrap the layers of messaging under the hashtags and ap‐
proach the conversation from different angles?

5.1.3 Sustaining our movements and 
healing from ruptures: Trust,
conflict, growth and care

The difficulty we have with allowing ourselves time to rest

is a challenge we face in our movements. As Ayak and others
discussed in previous days, burnout is a common phenome‐
non that threatens our capacity to organise. One of the
ideas suggested to combat this was considering rest as a
pathway to decolonisation. The group also included believing

38
Organising is intimate. survivors as a core value for facilitating healing, so as not to
perpetuate the cycle of harm we inherit from dominant
structures such as white supremacy and (cishetero) patriarchy. 

5.1.4 Friendship, love and sex: What 
do these have to do with feminist 
organising?

Love, sex and friendships fuel movement building, yet raise

relevant questions around power and accountability. Friend‐
ships and love relationships are political, because they cause
boundaries to blur across organisational structures. The
social capital gained from dating someone with organisa‐
tional power, for example, can make it difficult for other
members of the movement or organisation to critique that
person. In imagining what accountability could look like, one
participant suggested revisiting the values that brought the
community together, and remembering the “why” that drives
the movement when there is conflict.

5.1.5 Working across generations: 
Learning, leadership and the politics 
of memory 

In many African societal systems, our grandmothers are

teachers. How can we bring that notion into our movements
and heal from the trauma that intergenerational relations in
our movements hold? Experiences of resistance from both
young people and movement elders in opening up conversa‐
tions that answer this question were shared. Young people
often experience conflicts of values with older generations

39
"As feminists, we have of feminists around the kinds of rights that young women
should be fighting for. At the same time, one participant
this guilt. Like we
who has been active in the LGBTQ movement in Kenya
can’t take leave; like since 2007 shared her experience of many people falling
we can’t be listening away as they experienced burnout. She feels they should be
to music, [like we’re] training younger people to take over, but the younger gener‐
ation in the movement want to start their own organisations.
supposed to be
changing the world Seyi shared how she has seen how younger generations of
feminist activists that are met with large amounts of public‐
all the time."
ity for their work are not prepared for media questions, and
do not know how to handle backlash. This is where older
generations of feminists can provide support through motions
of solidarity and by offering a feminist lens on questions of
accountability. How do we preserve the memory of a move‐
ment in a way that, as gatekeepers transition out, younger
people are able to continue the work strongly with the re‐
sources that exist? The #Shayisfuba intergenerational
womxn’s assembly25 that took place in Cape Town earlier in
the year was noted as an example of the kinds of spaces
we need, to open up conversation around intergenera‐
tional organising.

25Ebrahim, S. (2019, 29 April). #Shayisfuba: Feminist Collective Demands

Feminist Government. The Daily Vox. https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/
shayisfuba-feminist-collective-demands-feminist-government-shaazia-

40
5.2 Surfacing the tensions 
within our movements

The open space dialogue prompted more questions. Yara

asked about the parameters of support and solidarity.
Should we support feminist movements when we have
strong disagreements with them, or their work is not aligned
with your values? Maimuna Jeng (The Gambia) responded to
Yara, saying that it depends on what the values in misalign‐
ment are. She said, “Me being feminist but going against
LGBT [rights], because they go against my culture or religion,
is inauthentic because I am going against the same thing I’m
fighting for.” In this, she reiterated the interconnectedness
of many different struggles, that all fit under the umbrella
of feminism and social justice.

Ayak said, “Feminism is not an a la carte menu. If you iden‐

tify as a feminist, you’re a feminist for all feminist issues,
irrespective. The good thing about feminist spaces is that it
allows for disagreements, because disagreements allow for
dialogue and resolutions. Even feminism as a concept keeps
evolving, and that’s alright.” Tigist added, “If you are a fem‐
inist there are no ifs and buts.” When it comes to forming
alliances, we may not always be friends, “but sometimes
there is a bigger cause that we need to work together for.”
The difficulties are more about power. In alliances, we need
to recognise power differences, and acknowledge each
other’s struggles.

41
Speaking to the difficulties of working in alliances, Seyi gave
an example of the Black Asian Minority Ethnic group (BAME),
a collective organised around political Blackness. “We are at a
crisis point in the diaspora movement,” she said, explaining
that while BAME came together on the basis of rooting for
Blackness, this does not guarantee unity. “Your politics as a
Black person could still be pushing colonialism, or neoliberal‐
ism – this idea of being closer to white power. I don’t know
what the answer is but that’s why I think we need to move
away from identity politics.”

Jac rounded off the conversation, saying, “There are a lot of

things we put up here that we don’t really know what to do
with yet. For example, we talked about sexual harassment in
the movement, and how it can be complicated to deal with it,
and that there is a culture of violence in our own communi‐
ties and practices.” While this is a daunting realisation, Jac
pointed out the opportunity that comes with awareness, “It’s
an emerging area… which means that we can be so creative in
making shit up, coming up with things and seeing if it works.”

5.3 Ecosystem dialogue: How 
do we build a movement when 
we have polarised views?

Shamillah introduced the next activity, the ecosystem dialogue,

an exercise that could facilitate a difficult but necessary con‐
versation around some of the disagreements that were
emerging in the room. She emphasised that this process is

42
not about finding solutions, but rather about naming and sur‐
facing the tensions. For the exercise, we collectively decided
on the constellation of actors that make up our feminist
movements, namely women, queer people, non-Black African
women, young people, people in religious institutions, people
in conflict areas, refugees, gender diverse people, black
women, donor organisations, people living on the continent,
African diaspora, people without internet access, people with
disabilities, environmental justice activists, sex workers and
older people.

In choosing some of these labels, there was some contesta‐

tion among participants around language, especially around
race and gender. Yara, who suggested the label “non-Black
African women,” explained, “When we talk about African
women, there is this terminology of ‘Black women.’ I don’t
consider myself Black nor white. I am a person of colour. In
my community in North Africa, there are many people who
consider themselves white. Every time I find this terminology
of Black activists, Black women [to mean] African, I don’t fit
in. It excludes me.” Jan responded, “Language is very com‐
plex… As a South African, when I hear non-Black, I think white.
We need to interrogate the language that we use. The place
from which you speak is often the place from which you de‐
fine how you engage in this space.” Also responding to Yara’s
comment was Sheena, who pointed out that Blackness is not
a political identity that everybody carries in East Africa.

Nyx added an expansion on how we could think about gender

and queerness. They said, “There are different levels of queer

43
and when we speak about queer in predominantly cis-women
spaces, we speak about the ‘L’ and the ‘G’ and not always about
trans or people who are gender diverse.” They continued to say
that it’s important that we take note of this so that we do not
“leave out gender diverse people, and are inclusive in how we
imagine this.”

The dialogue stirred up a lot of emotion and reflection. Eva

N'cho (Ivory Coast) shared that by having to speak for voices
apart from her own, she became aware of injustices. She
asked herself, “What am I doing about it? Are we doing enough
to ensure those voices are raised?” In many ways, the dialogue
showed us how our assumptions influence how we organise.
One participant said, "We make lots of assumptions, about
who we are, and what we do and how we can change things
and it stifles our ability to question. We need to be more cu‐
rious and eager to learn to understand what everyone’s con‐
tribution to the movement is."

Amanda Hodgeson added, “It is a lot easier to point out what

people are doing wrong… Our organisations would be better
if we could see something and point it out with love and
offer how we can change it.” Tshego emphasised the impor‐
tance of being intentional about how we distribute informa‐
tion and resources: “We should definitely make a more
conscious effort to make sure that you're not just putting
something on the internet, but you are directing it to the
specific people you know are underrepresented.”

44
The dialogue also revealed how deeply entrenched toxic
frameworks are. Seyi said, "It felt really easy to get into
‘oppression Olympics’ and see who was oppressed the most,
yet everyone’s anger was valid. Everyone felt like they were
being erased. We spoke for the last two days about being
kinder and more understanding, but when we are in there,
we are tested." One participant agreed, saying, “What I saw
was ‘divide and conquer’ playing out here… We subscribe to
that in a lot of what we do. Instead of forging alliances, we
push potential partners further away from the work that we
are doing.” Jac added, “It’s funny to see how we ended up
with an old school constellation... we just reverted back to a
familiar form and structure. It would be nice to play this in a
different iteration, that expands it to a different imaginative
form and structure.” 

While we did not find the solutions to the issues that had
surfaced, Shamillah prompted us to stay aware of what the
discomfort had revealed. She asked, “What does it mean to
think about power and privilege? What does it mean to think
about inclusion, and really challenge ourselves? What questions
are we not asking? Who are we not even thinking about?… We
can challenge each other, gently, compassionately, but we
must do the challenging, because nothing will shift without it.”

45
5.4 Concluding day three

Coding inclusion into our feminist practice, as individuals and

as collectives, requires acknowledging the ways in which our
identities shift depending on the contexts in which we find
ourselves. Secondly, the love, sex and friendships that fuel
our movements affect power dynamics through the blurring
of boundaries, and raise questions around accountability. The
politics of preserving memory through intergenerational heal‐
ing and learning in our movements was another key issue
raised. The day brought about an appreciation for online spaces
and the opportunities that online activism presents for the
sustainability of our mobilisation efforts.

46
 6.Making a feminist 
internet in a digital 
age in Africa: Day four

Day four gave us the opportunity to delve into conversations

around collaboration: from an overview of the work of the
APC Women’s Rights Programme, embedded in partnership
and trusted relationships, to a curated “Marketplace,” where
participants were given the space to speak about personal
and organisational projects and invite collaboration from
those who were interested around them. The day concluded
with a conversation inviting quick “popcorn” responses to
the question, “What does it take to make a feminist internet
in Africa?”, which closed the convening.

6.1 Documenting a shared 
history 

The APC team took us through the organisation’s history

and projects, including the #TakeBackTheTech campaign,26
GenderIT,27 the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN),
28 EROTICS,29 the Feminist Tech eXchange (FTX)30and the
APC is a weird animal.
Digital Stories platform.31 This conversation set the tone for
It is an organisation the day, emphasising the necessarily collaborative nature of
and also a network. mobilising around the issues in which we invest our time,

26 https://www.takebackthetech.net
27 https://genderit.org
28https://www.apc.org/en/project/firn-feminist-internet-research-network
29https://erotics.apc.org
30https://www.apc.org/en/project/feminist-tech-exchange
31https://stories.apc.org
47
emotions and energy. Later in the day, participants were in‐
vited to meditate on key events in their own lives that had
impacted their activism, and to share these stories with
each other.

The self-reflective storytelling exercise broke open new

understandings of what storytelling is for. One participant
expressed her discovery that storytelling is about healing,
and not about having a “polished” story that can be marketed.
Another participant loved learning about the methodology
of using storytelling to open up deeper conversations about
how we experience our movements.

6.2 Conclusion of #MFIAfrica 

In the closing minutes of the final day, the plenary sought to

remind us of some of the key insights that had been shared
over the convening period, and also opened the floor for
“popcorn” responses to the question, “What does it take to
make a feminist internet in Africa?”

Firstly, it was important for us to be informed about how

our engagement with technology and the internet is politi‐
cal. Across the continent we experience severe violations of
our right to internet access through government-authorised in‐
ternet shutdowns. We also see the increasing use of biometric
identification systems as access points to basic services.
Such government behaviour has strong implications for our

48
senses of agency and autonomy. Furthermore, understanding
more about how our bodies are the connecting point between
our physical world and the digital gives us insight into the
reality of silencing and online violence. Having an in-depth
understanding of how violence is enacted in relation to digital
technologies empowers us to act.

The intentional inclusion of and collaboration with actors

across the constellation of our movements was also recog‐
nised as a necessary element to making a feminist internet
in Africa. Integrating the work of feminist “techies” and
tech-related rights activists into our movements on the

49
[The movement] has continent was noted as important. Cross-campaign collabo‐
ration between grassroots and transnational organisations,
so many faces, so
as well as creating spaces for intergenerational learning,
many bodies. were also considered crucial. One participant took a moment
Collectives. to vocalise her appreciation for and recognition of all the
work that has been done before us, and emphasised the im‐
Institutions. Free
portance of “valuing the backs we step on.”
nodes. You cannot
avoid working with Freedom of expression was described as one of the most
powerful strategies and tactics used by activists over the
different actors.
past decade and a half. One participant shared that for her,
a feminist internet means the ability to express herself with
temerity and fearlessness. Another participant called for
more feminist porn to be accessible online.

Integrating the feminist principle of movements into the vision

of a feminist internet in Africa also has a lot to do with how
we organise. A feminist internet means having strong offline
support systems, as well as a consistent reflective presence
to the process of our movement’s becoming. Strong move‐
ments also require from us an attention to power and privi‐
lege. How are we using our own privilege to redistribute
power to others, and how are we leveraging the power ex‐
istent in our networks to support those doing local work?
Our governance structures also need to have accountability
mechanisms in place, as well as space for creativity and ex‐
perimentation to reinvent ways of working together and
carrying out work that breaks away from traditional NGO-
type organising and structures. Lastly, strong movements
need to have a strong articulation of what our common

50
fight is for a feminist internet on the continent. Movements
are relationships, and so, if we think collaboratively about
these issues, it opens up greater possibilities to build some‐
thing strong and agile.

51
7. Appendices

7.1 Transcription of Jan Moolman’s 
welcome speech on “location”
28 October 2019

I didn’t sleep much last night, because I kept thinking to

myself, what am I going to say to a group of people a) who
know so much already, and b) who are already as politicised
as most of us will ever be. I went back and forth and back
and forth and woke up every 20 minutes and applied some
essential oils and did some breathing and did some opening
of my arms and all these things that are supposed to help
calm us. I didn’t get calm, no. And so, initially I thought,
what is important here is to talk about the complexities of
space and time and location and privilege and history, all of
which are such essential components of any movement that
any of us are part of. And I thought, maybe I’ll start about
the history of this region that often is unseen or unacknowl‐
edged, and very often not remembered. Then I thought,
well, I am me, and I’m the kind of person who always has to
start from myself, and I often think that what is most
important in our movements that we don’t think of often
enough is about our location as individuals. And so, this is
where I am going to start from, and this is what the next
few minutes are going to be about. Because what’s really

52
important, I think, is that the places we speak from are always
intimate, they are always deeply personal, and they are al‐
ways deeply political.

This is where I speak from. I speak from the location of a

Black South African woman, and the accompanying identity
that is read from the colour of my skin and the texture of
my hair, that makes me so-called Coloured. Because in this
day, and in this country, as we all know, race matters. I
speak from the location of a cis-woman in a relationship
with a heterosexual Black rural man, and I remember what it
felt like the first time he touched me, the first time he held
me, the first time he kissed me, because years before that,
that touch and that kiss and that intimacy could have landed
both of us in jail. I remember also that I was raised to hate
this person that I love. I speak from the location of a body
that knows hunger and what it feels like, that has become a
body that occupies a very different space: a middle-class
body, that right now, benefits from the body of another
woman in my house, who is performing the reproductive
labour of looking after my two-year-old, who you will meet,
and she is much more interesting than I am. It is that labour
that makes it possible for me to be here today.

I also speak from my location as a mother to this two-year-

old, who I am teaching to occupy the world fiercely, without
fear, to be wild and loud and curious. Even as her proximity
to violence is so real, so in-my-face, from the moment I
wake up to the moment I go to bed. When she is away from
me, I wonder, who is she with, who is harming her? What is

53
this doing to her life? And I also wonder something else.
Should I also teach her this skill to be small and invisible?
This skill that all of us know so well how to perform?
Would this be right? Just so that she feels safe? Whatever
safe means, I don’t know.

And I wonder – because really, how many locations can one

occupy without completely unravelling – I also speak from
the location of working in a global organisation, APC, which
puts me in a closer proximity to power and resources that
many of you don’t have. And I want to use this, and we want
to use this proximity to hopefully create a space where we
can come together: to talk, to share, listen and rest, in the
knowledge that at this moment, technology is changing
how we learn and love and organise.

Our complexity and the simultaneous locations we occupy

are also our greatest assets as we build and sustain our
movements. And all of us bring into this space the rich his‐
tory of our ancestors, our histories of conquest, of victory,
of lands and valleys and mountains and holy spaces that
colonialism and apartheid tried to erase, because I firmly
believe that to remember is to resist. And to remember is to
draw on the collective power of what came before us, the
collective power that we have here, and the collective and
individual power that we need for the future. And that’s the
end of the first half. [Clapping]

54
I’ve done this 75,000 times, and every time I’m as nervous
as the first time. So, who is here? My name is Jan Moolman,
I’m one of the co-managers of the APC Women’s Rights
Programme, we also have five other team members here
[introduces team].

7.2 Birthday poem to President 
Yoweri Museveni by
Dr.Stella Nyanzi
 

Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.

How bitterly sad a day!
I wish the smelly and itchy cream-coloured candida festering
in Esiteri's cunt had suffocated you to death during birth.
Suffocated you just like you are suffocating us with oppression,
suppression and repression!
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.
How painfully ugly a day!
I wish the lice-filled bush of dirty pubic hair overgrown all
over Esiteri's unwashed chuchu had strangled you at birth.
Strangled you just like the long tentacles of corruption you
sowed and watered into our bleeding economy.
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.
How nauseatingly disgusting a day!
I wish the acidic pus flooding Esiteri's cursed vaginal canal
had burnt up your unborn fetus.
Burnt you up as badly as you have corroded all morality and
professionalism out of our public institutions in Uganda.
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.

55
How horrifically cancerous a day!
I wish the infectious dirty-brown discharge flooding Esiteri's
loose pussy had drowned you to death.
Drowned you as vilely as you have sank and murdered the
dreams and aspirations of millions of youths who languish
in the deep sea of massive unemployment, and under-
employment in Uganda.
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday.
How traumatically wasted a day!
I wish the poisoned uterus sitting just above Esiteri's dry clitoris
had prematurely miscarried a thing to be cast upon a
manure pit.
Prematurely miscarried just like you prematurely aborted
any semblance of democracy, good governance and rule of
law.
Yoweri, they say it was your birthday yesterday!
How morbidly grave a day!
I wish that Esiteri's cursed genitals had pushed out a monstrously
greenish-bluish still-birth.
You should have died at birth, you dirty delinquent
dictator...
You should have died in birth, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
.......
If you want to beat me for my heartfelt birthday poem,
come and find me at my home. Ask the bodabodamen to
direct you to Mama Stella's house with a red gate. I refuse
to be gagged!

56
7.3 “On the ‘M’ Word” by
Caroline Kouassiaman
29 October 2019

On the M Word

Quiet.
Quiet.
Storm brewing, sky darkening, air is heavy, go inside. Stay
inside. Close your windows.
I heard they are trying to quell, trying to squash
Squash the sounds of
Stomping. Running. Jumping. Walking with a cane. Cycling.
Sliding. Jump-roping. Speedwalking. Chair-wheeling. Skipping.

Movement

Too fast / too slow / too much / too loud / too quiet

TOO… Too… too…

 
Too much change / too much new / too much XX chromosome /
too much resistance / too much “what are you?” / too much
“hmmm” / too much “I can’t quite tell” / too much wet / too
much glitter / too much colour / too much NO / too much
OH / too much ooooooohhhhhh

Feels like. Sounds like.

Running. Skipping. Flying. Swimming. Diving. Dancing.
Twerking. Stilt-walking. Catapulting. Tip-toeing. Twirling.

57
Kayaking. Racing.
At first – it’s far, at first – it’s quiet, at first it’s footprints, at
first it’s echoes, at first it’s whispers, at first it’s messages
written quickly, at first it’s long Skype calls that never seem
to end, at first it’s loud bursts of laughter in a crowded
cinema. At first – it’s practice.

And then bursts and spurts AND squirts, and

ARMOUR. There’s armour. We’ve got armour. Glorious armour.

Umbrellas. Fast bikes. Dykes on bikes. Scarves. Data – lots of
data, plenty, plenty data. Wit. Quick fingers. Effective fingers.
Codes. Disruption. Claiming my time. Reclaiming my time.
First aid kits. Extra bags in your bag, au cas où (just in
case). An extra pagne (wrapper/lappa), au cas où (just in
case). Unlimited data on your phone. Running shoes.
Waterproof suitcases. And, plastic bags to

cover / your / hair /

when it’s raining outside.

Call your cousins. Tweet your people. Tell them It’s on.

58