Beyond Neoliberalism Series: The Violence of It All with Carol Nganga

There is a wealth of African feminist academic and activist research and knowledge on neoliberalism and its impacts in the majority world. Yet, this knowledge has, for the most part, been removed from conversations on neoliberalism and its ideological and policy tenets and generally disregarded which is a function and consequence of neoliberalism itself.

Recognizing this ActionAid International, Akina Mama wa Afrika and The Nawi Collective  co-convened a series of conversations among African feminists challenging neoliberalism and proposing alternatives towards a collective vision for the African continent and its people. The first of these conversations was held in Nairobi in February 2025

This podcast series: Beyond Neoliberalism ( Weaving a feminist future together) is a series of conversations borne out of the convening held in February 2025, that will interrogate, propose, shape and document pan-African feminist narratives beyond neoliberalism.  This is done in recognition that we are building on decades worth of work. Our intention is to contribute to reinvigorating, documenting and amplifying. connecting key movements, thinkers, creatives and activists.

In today’s episode we will share an overview of how neoliberalism in Africa has affected women disproportionately leading to their structural exclusion and how we can use narrative shifts using storytelling and varied research methods for our reclamation with our guest Carol Nganga (Msingi Trust).

The Beyond Neoliberalism Series is produced with the financial support of Action Aid International.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the JALLI Podcast, a podcast from the Naui Collective creating a space for oral documentation between and about African women working to tackle macroeconomic inequalities using a Pan-African feminist lens. I am your host, Elizabeth Meyner. Welcome to another season of the JALLI podcast. We are excited to be exploring a new podcast series titled Beyond Neoliberalism Withing a Feminist Future. This is a series that is born out of the conversations that we had at a convening with African feminists in February 2025. And we were hosted by Akinamawa Africa, the Naui Collective, and Action Aid International. The idea behind this series of conversations is to explore why African feminist voices are excluded from conversations on neoliberalism. There's a wealth of African feminist academic and activist research and knowledge on neoliberalism and its impact in the majority world. However, this knowledge has for the most part been removed from conversations of neoliberalism and its ideological and policy tenets, and it has generally been disregarded, which is a function and consequence of neoliberalism itself. In recognition of this, these three organizations decided to host a convening on a series of conversations to challenge neoliberalism and propose alternatives towards a collective vision for the African continent and its people. In today's episode, we will share an overview of how neoliberalism in Africa has affected women disproportionately, leading to their structural exclusion and how we can use narrative shifts using storytelling and other research methods for our reclamation. And to do this, we have our guest Carol Nanga from the Singit Trust. Welcome, Carol. How are you today?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

I am well, thank you so much. It's an honor to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Could you please introduce yourself along the three P's? That's the personal, professional, and political.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

I am Carol Nanga, uh daughter of David and Mary Nanga. I am a sister, I am an auntie, I am a friend, I am a bother to many people. But uh but I am also a believer in deep justice. I am a believer in the sanctity and dignity of all life. And so that's me. Uh, that's personally, uh professionally. I am the founder and team lead at Musingi Trust, uh, where we make the connections between faith, justice, activism, and advocacy. Uh, politically, I would call myself, I lean more to the left. I um uh I don't ascribe to political parties in a sense, but I believe especially, especially in the agency and the role of women in in the liberation of the world and the role of black women uh in particular, black African women. So I would call myself a pan-African feminist or womanist, so that's me.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Thank you for that concise uh introduction. We'll come back to the idea of um the sanctity of life just a little bit later um for one of our discussion points. So, as we have laid it out, we want to discuss uh the violence that we face as African women and how neoliberalism continues to fuel this violence. Um, the roots of neoliberalism in Africa are clearly found in the IMF and World Bank um structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 90s. And this led to public sector cutbacks in education, in health, um, the deregulation and privatization, um, crippling a lot of like state functions and slashing welfare provisions. How do you feel that these foundational aspects of neoliberalism continue to manifest to date? And what specific examples can you share that demonstrate how they have deepened the inequality and disproportionately affected women's livelihoods and access to essential services? And I would love to hear how this has especially manifested in your work with faith-based communities.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Right. So the 1980s and the 90s were not a good time for the world. Uh, and so when we are 30, 40 years away from it and seeing what was being touted as a way of quote unquote saving the world being one of the ways where the world is being destroyed is actually very sad. So when those structural adjustment programs and all of those uh policies by the IMF and the World Bank and all those Bretton Woods institutions come to fore, it is never about the poor, it's about lining uh uh uh financial and political interests. And so what governments, the role of governments or how governments were set up was that we we sort of donate our agency to government to take care of us, yeah. And so when these structural adjustment programs by these Breton Woods institutions come over, the way that the government is mandated to take care of us is hampered because what they end up doing is that they cut off or they realign national interests, uh, public interests for what I think are global uh private uh business enterprise interests. And that would be in areas like healthcare. Uh where I remember when I used to be sick, I used to go to the Waidaka dispensary near home and it had medicine and it had um it had medicine, it had everything I needed for my cold or something that I got sick. Waitaka right now does not have uh uh as a result of uh those IMF cards, does not the structural adjustment program does not have that medication. Um I am a product of public primary education and we got books, we got um the kind of education that I got through the public institution was very was very good. And uh it's actually I will it's actually interesting because I was we went to high school together, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yes, we did. I was I was going to mention that we did, yeah. And we went to high school like right in the like at the height of a lot of these cuts. And I think we were a bit luckier that they hadn't they hadn't um like like it was not apparent what the what the cuts were doing, but I think also like we had a privilege because of where our school was located, um, that we didn't face like you know, like a lot of schools had like water shortages or electricity, cutoffs, and things like that. And we only started experiencing like water shortages too, okay, for me, towards the towards the end of the of the four-year term. I think when we were in the fourth year of secondary school, that's when the water water shortages started becoming more frequent. But before that, we had never experienced it. And yet it was it was like very widespread in like in other schools located in other areas.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

And so like I would like to connect that because one of the ways where I come from is the Ushago of the Ushago West of Nairobi County, and so this is uh I want to link that with like SAPs and the education because of the quality of education that I got from my public primary school. I was able to come to the kind of public secondary school it was, but not in a way, but it was so it's um that, so it's healthcare, it's education, it's um and then there's also a thing I would I as I was thinking about this conversation, it's also access to financing and how especially, especially around credit and how women access and access to credit. Women had just started getting credit, and so when the loans and everything becomes a bit more expensive, credit now becomes a preserve of the private institutions, and so that's when you find micro lending institutions coming to the fore. And what micro lending institutions have done to families and communities in Kenya, especially is horrible, uh, because they the high interest rates, the secrecy around loans, the the violence, the violence in in how they come back for their loans as well, is horrible. So all of this, again, we say all struggle is interconnected, and this is how we see the interconnectedness of this struggle.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yeah, and it's interesting you've talked about like violence and the way um like predatory practices like this micro lending, then um it visits violence on these women and their families, right? And it's uh as much as you would say, like, but that's a private arrangement. I'm like, no, it's not. It's it's the environment that has caused this to be an acceptable form of people being able to access credit because at the end of the day, people are just trying to survive, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

And when we just a minute, when women take loans, they never take loans for themselves. Women take loans for the family, they take loans for the well-being of the community, and so then the those loans then become a source of pain. And the reason they are taking them is because education is not working, so they want to, or these uh they want to take a loan for school, healthcare is not working, so they want to pay for someone who's sick in hospital, and all of this is connected to those structural adjustment programs.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah. Exactly. And that is a perfect segue to our next discussion where I wanted to connect that to the idea of necropolitics came up in the in the forum where um someone talked about that the state actively decides who lives and who dies based on the economic production. When we think about women and the role that they play in social reproduction, in upholding a lot of these um uh state functions, uh, public goods, public services, that they have to step in because of the state's failure. And the state also um framing like the provision of these services from a frame of scarcity or austerity. How does this then um impact you or land on you, considering that at the beginning of our conversation, you described yourself as not only a believer, but a person who also believes in the sanctity of life. What does that mean in the like when when we consider like necropolitic as a covert state uh approach to how it deals with its citizens?

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Oh, that's a that's a deep and difficult question to answer. I'll try. That is why we're here. I'll try my level best, and I strongly, strongly believe that dignity and life is not a preserve of rich old white men. And I say that intentionally because um if you're not rich, if you're not old, if you're not white, if you're not a man, uh, and uh if you're not straight, I I need to add the straight as well. If you're maybe zero of the five, you need you are entitled to good life. If you're two of the five, you you you are entitled to good life and dignity. And so by the virtue of being a human, a living being, you are entitled to a dignified life. There is absolutely no way to debate whether you should live or not. There is the way we have classed our society also then means that there are people to whom we expect suffering, and there are people to whom we expect uh uh thriving to happen. So when I say that I believe in the sanctity of life, I believe in the sanctity of all life and even the nun, and it means the built environment, it means the the rivers, this like I am that kind of person who believes that all life needs to be uh to be allowed to breathe. Yeah. So I think by the state and these institutions and the politics and capitalism and neoliberalism, putting a price tag on whose life is more important or even whose labor is more is more productive, it's a slap in the face of what humanity should be. Uh that we should all be coexisting. Uh, we should learn to the Ubuntu that we the Ubuntu philosophy where we we've we agree that my personhood is tied to your personhood is what then we counter when we put price tags on somebody on whose labor is more important. But what I I think when we connect this to especially women, you will find a woman has woken up, gone to the farm, cooked, everything, and then someone will come at home and the woman would say, I've just I was at home the whole day doing nothing. So the doing nothingness when you're running homes, when you're running microeconomies and macroeconomies in the in the household ecosystem, that is what we have been reduced to. That we don't see the things that we do as contributions to the lived realities of the world. So when the world calls us, uh by virtue of undermining our labor for so long, we have ended up undermining our labor and our contribution too. But also we quote unquote contribute only in monetary terms, and we forget that we are the ones who are building communities, we are the ones who are keeping communities together, we know who has died, we know who has who has a child, we know who who needs uh support to go to the hospital. So all of those are ways where we we are contributing in communities, but that does not does not add to the GDP of our country in a way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Or rather, they say that they are unable to quantify it in a way that's useful. And I'm like, okay, um, in that case, remove remove the work that women, young girls do.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

I think I saw research somewhere about if what women, if the labor of women was uh was put into uh into the GDP, it would all collapse because then or like state economies would be so you'd be like, what, why, what what are these women doing that we don't know? Yeah. But it's safer, it's better to not quantify it because then women will don't get to claim their place in the in the society.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Exactly. And then because then if you were to be able to claim your your stake in the in the labor and social reproduction and like give it like a clear figure, then the state would be forced then to address how best to support how best to support you know that social reproduction. And that's something that it doesn't want to do.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Um, one of the things you wouldn't beg for it, and then you wouldn't beg for it, because I think also as women, because of how we come into these spaces, we have the sericalist idea mentality where it's like government, please help us. We are but weak women, you know, but I think more and more with feminism and uh womanism, and uh we women's labor is counting more and more, and I'm I'm excited for it.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

And that's good because um I did want us to discuss, like in terms of being disregarded, what are some of the ways that African feminists um are pushing, are pushing for the agenda of visibilizing um women's labor? Um in the face of neoliberalism, what are some of the ways that um African feminists are making sure that their knowledge and their ways and their lived experiences are gaining traction and contributing to challenging what has been the dominant idea that um austerity, scarcity are the ways to influence system change.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Uh writing, uh, one of the best ways of seeing it is writing. Um, and I love reading uh feminists and feminist works. So we'd call Nanjala, we'd call uh this uh the African Feminist Practice, uh Praxis by Jessica Horn that's come out. There are very many feminist writers who are putting the work ahead. In Kenya, we have uh Justine Wanda. I love the work that she's doing on social media, I love the work of uh Mombi as well. Mombi Kanyogo, she's amazing in terms of the wisdom that uh they all bring to the table. I also would like some movements like feminist in Kenya, there's the pussy power movement as well, by being very vocal and um naming uh by calling the movement pussy power, is being anapologetic about the power that we come with, and it's coming from our from our pussies, we would say. Uh, then I am at the intersection of faith and justice, and I love the work of um the circle of concerned African women theologians, uh led by Masyan Baudouye, and in Kenya Spear headed by the one uh the greatest of them all, uh Esther Mombo. Um amazing, amazing women uh within the circle of concerned women theologians who are at the forefront of fighting theological uh patriarchy, and also uh churches are part of the places where women's contribution, if women left the church, it would fall. There's no way, there's no two ways about it. That's true. The higher you go, the male light becomes. And some of the work that I've done in uh with Musingi is exploring the the way women uh uh the way women navigate the corridors of power within faith spaces. And it's it's sad, very sad, but it's very telling because uh what we see in churches is what we see in homes, is what we see in the workplaces. So the the minimization of the role of women is not is not a one arena thing only. It's an arena. It's it's something that is uh replicated in all the sectors. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

That's true. And I always find that it's very unfortunate that um faith-based spaces, like organized faith-based spaces, or of course like a site of violence towards women, right? But have also, and especially like all over the continent, still been an opportunity for radical organizing, especially like at a community level for for women. Um, and this is not always the like the radical organizing, the radical organizing and the community work is not always um is not always recognized, it's not always like seen as valid. Yet even here, like during like the multi-party struggles, a lot of the organization happened like through the church, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

And it's unfortunate that it is being used still as a tool as for like neocolonial um violence and you know, in some cases, also state suppression, in the ways um it has allowed itself to be used like that. But we shall it it won't always be like this.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Um that's why we are present in those spaces. And one of the ways that we need to, as feminists and uh womanists, as Pan-African uh liberation practitioners, is that we need um we cannot uh relegate some spaces for just men to thrive. Go where the men are, uh where they have taken control, be there because that's that's where the power and the money is. Uh, and so we need to be in those spaces of power.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

That's true. We need to be in those spaces of power. We need to push back um against against like what what they think is the order. Um, I think as we conclude, I would like to ask you so, what is your contribution towards a collective vision for the African continent and its people?

SPEAKER_01 23:44

That's the only way to go. We cannot do this work by ourselves. It's like you pull from your end, I pull from my end, and that all struggle is interconnected. But at the end of the day, Africa remains, uh, we remain African. Uh and uh as the vision of our pan-African leaders, and we we recognize that they silenced the women's voices, but our African, the African dream of liberation cannot, as Thomas Sankara said, there cannot be uh any revolution without the liberation of women. And so the liberation of women is a precursor to liberation of this continent. Yeah, so yeah. So we have to we have to keep working together. We cannot do it in isolation, but we have to do what we do best in my field. Whatever I am doing, I need to connect it to what you're doing, what um Akinamama are doing, what Naui is doing, what um everybody is doing. We have to connect the struggle because the struggle is always interconnected, and so is liberation.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

I love that. And those are the perfect words to end on. Thank you so much, Carol, for your time. Thank you for your reflections. Um, they were also like you were like so succinct also during the convening in the ways that you shared about like your work and um and how we should dream better. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Thank you as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Stay connected with us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on all your favorite platforms to stay up to date on all things jali. Until next time, remember to keep amplifying the voices and perspectives of African women in your own circles. See you.