Beyond Neoliberalism Series: The Messy Middle (Part 1) with Fatimah Kelleher

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.

This episode is an opportunity to reflect on the learnings from the convening and the Jacaranda Paper in envisioning a feminist future and how to get people involved with our guest Fatimah Kelleher.

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. Thank you everyone for joining us on our last episode of the Beyond Neoliberalism Moving a Feminist Future Together podcast series. I really enjoyed talking about a series of conversations that came out of our convening that we held in February 2025 to interrogate the partnership and what Pan-African feminist neoliberalism say, what a future beyond neoliberalism looks like. Today I'm so so so excited to be talking to the wonderful Fatima Kelleha. And this episode will be an opportunity to reflect on the learnings from the convening and the Jakaranda paper that she was the author of To Envision a Feminist Future and more importantly, how to get people involved. Welcome, Fatima. Could you please introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Hello, Elizabeth. Thank you very much for having me on board. It's really great to be here. So I am Fatima Kelleha, and I am uh a feminist political economist, uh working from a pan-African feminist perspective. Um I am a Nigerian and also a British national, Nigerian first, uh born in Meidugari in Northeast Nigeria. Um and uh I have for the last 20 plus years been working on political economy from a variety of different perspectives. Um I work very solidly now in the political justice, in the economic justice space, focusing on women's economic justice in particular. But I've also had sort of a you know a relatively in-depth career uh working in the education space as well and also in the health space, maternal health more specifically. Um in terms of political economy, the areas I'm particularly interested in are quite varied from uh employment and trade to care and agriculture in particular. Uh politically, I am driven by the idea of social change through social movements and the importance of socialist policies in actually bringing around a different future and very critically how African feminist frameworks intersect with those.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

And I really look forward to hearing like some of your ruminations on like the different ways we can imagine the future together. I think the first thing I'd like to ask you is as you wrote the paper, how how was the experience, how did the experience of the convening that we had in February inspire you and inspire like some of the thoughts and suggestions that you've put forth in the Jacaranda paper?

SPEAKER_01 3:23

That's thank you for that question. That's really important actually, and it gives me an opportunity, I think, in many ways, to point out straight off the bat that the Jacaranda paper is the paper of the convening. It is the voice of the convening. In many ways, actually, it's not really my voice. We had in the room, I took almost verbatim notes for the whole three days, and there were also others doing that for me. And so I had a lot of direct data to draw from in terms of what the paper was going to say. And in that room, we had a collection of amazing African feminists who have all been engaging with neoliberalism and the critique of neoliberalism and how to go beyond neoliberalism in different ways for quite a while. And they brought all of that to bear into that room. So we had some of the most interesting, dynamic conversations I have had on this topic, you know, so far, to be perfectly honest with you. Um and the Jacaranda paper is a reflection of what was said in those spaces. So I don't really even see myself as the author of it. I'm just in many ways the curator of what was said into a structure that can kind of make sense to be digested by others. Really and truly, like what you see written there is the thought leadership of the people in that room that in over those over those three days. Um, and it was very powerful, actually. And you know, the reason why this convening was so important is because you know, conversations around beyond neoliberalism are already happening. You know, sometimes you'll see it sort of beyond GDP, you'll see it you know, framed as kind of you know, post-growth, or you know, how do we tackle growthism? All of this in many ways is about you know going beyond neoliberalism. But the extent to which African feminist voices and African women's voices more broadly factor in those conversations is is just you know not at all representative, given that this is a conversation that is going to impact our con our continent so heavily. So being in a space where we were not only talking about it, but actually talking to each other about it in safety, right? With the safety of it being us without any external distractions was really, really critical. And yeah, I walked away extremely nourished from that whole process. And then it was literally just a case of taking what the collective had said and putting it in into some kind of you know digestible framework of writing.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Love that. Um, I think what when you talk about like the exclusion of African feminist voices from these uh spaces, um and also like what that collective managed, that that collective in February managed to achieve. I think one of the things that stood out for me is always the thing of like we need critical mass and we need solidarity also with these other pathways that you've mentioned, like beyond GDP and Dgrowth. Um, all these things need to be able, like we either need to be to stand in solidarity to each other, or you know, bring more people into like some of our thought processes so we can form that um critical mass. Are you able to speak to either through your own experiences or from what came up in the conversations about what challenges we are facing in gaining this critical mass or um in getting people to stand in solidarity with each other?

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the start, the starting point for that actually is for us to just have that understanding of what we're talking about when we when we think about neoliberalism, what our understanding of neoliberalism is. The word itself, you know, is a word that was, you know, sort of came out of academia in order to describe the way capitalism was changing from the 1980s and 1990s onwards, right? Um, and it is a word that you know not many people use in their daily lives, you know. So when I come out of you know the amazing uh life that I live, you know, with other African feminists working on the economy, um, you know, such as the Naui collective that I'm a part of, you know, and I go into other areas of my life, if I start talking about neoliberalism, there's a lot of people there who are not going to know what that means. It doesn't mean that they doesn't they don't know what it is because they are living it, but they won't necessarily know what that word means in and of itself, because it's very much one that's used by us in our spaces of engagement. So one of the first things we need to do actually is ensure that everybody is aware what we are referring to when we talk about neoliberalism. And then, you know, one of the things that was discussed in the convening is even the question of, you know, do we use the same language as you know the system itself gives us this language to use? Do we use that language in order to unpack and to um deconstruct and then challenge, or do we have to find other ways of creating new language for ourselves that everybody will be able to engage in in order to create that critical mass? And we pose that as a question because I think one thing to also highlight here is that that convening is the first of a series of convenings. So we didn't go there to answer all of the questions. I mean, that would not make any sense. We went there actually, in many ways, to pose some initial questions and then to start looking at what the answers could look like. Um, but we will have other convenings that will start to then pick up those questions to further interrogate and then to really start looking at what our collective answer will be like. So, you know, in terms of neoliberalism, neoliberalism, you know, like I said, is this is essentially a morphing of the capitalist system in the 80s and 90s, which really kind of moved away from this idea of you know, sort of uh industrial production, etc., into what today has become better known as austerity in many ways. Um, so the complete cutback of the states. And for Africa, and I think it's important for us just to talk about Africa in this instance, although neoliberalism is a global uh system, you know, this really kicked in with the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and the 1990s. And you know, what did those programs do? Well, they went in, they hollowed out the state in many of our countries that were, you know, developing um strong state systems in order to be able to respond to the needs of uh emerging nations. Um, what this looked like was cuts to public services, for example, deindustrialization. So many of our countries, which at that point had started looking at import substitution strategies, so you know, strategies that would not rely on um imports from the global north and elsewhere for its key produce and key products, that was removed. And instead, what we had created were export strategies that were heavily focused on sort of a 2.0 of the extraction of our resources. So we know during the colonial period, our resources were extracted, you know, very blatantly and very openly by the colonial powers because that's the system that was in existence. You know, mask was off really, there was no pretense around it. But with our independence, um, you know, what we had was a gradual sort of rise in sovereignty and thinking around what economic sovereignty could look like. But then these structural adjustment programs, which came in on the behest of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, essentially just stopped all of that ingestation bam. And so what you had is countries that effectively were not following through on the development trajectories that they were supposed to. And now we have countries that are heavily indebted and aid-dependent as a direct result of those policies. And as we went into the 21st century, the SAPs just sort of morphed, really, once again. So they were no longer called structural adjustment programs per se, but the continuous negotiations with the IMF and the World Bank, um, as well as the bilateral powers that largely control those countries, that control those two sorry, um, global institutions, meant that it was simply a continuation of very much of the same policies, uh, often as part of loan conditionalities. Um, and so the challenge, really, in many ways, the first challenge that I want to talk about is the way in which, because we've had almost 40 years of this, uh, more than 40 years now, actually, it has become almost the orthodoxy within many of our countries and within our policy spaces. You know, so our own economists and policymakers have become very wedded to this idea of sort of neoliberal capitalism as the way forward, even though you know there isn't there isn't a country, a high-income country today that developed on neoliberal capitalism. There actually isn't, you know, and so how that rationale sort of kind of makes sense, I still don't fully understand. But what what happens is that when we go into spaces, and I say the collective we here, so those who have critiques of neoliberal capitalism, you know, when we go into spaces, whether it be at the national level, at the continental level, or in the at the global level, to challenge, you know, you know, why do we have to have like a public sector wage freeze, for example, which includes, you know, public, which includes health service workers. When we go into those spaces, you know, we are often met with um very powerful uh policymakers and advisors to policymakers who genuinely are committed to the idea that this is the way forward. And it's partly because neoliberalism has also done a very good job of convincing everyone or convincing a lot of people that it is an apolitical economic approach, that it has no political ideology underpinning it. But it does, you know, it believes that uh the market is dominant, that you know, a dominant market and an unfettered market, a market where basically countries do not really get to regulate as much, etc., you know, will bring about the best possible outcome. You know, it is heavily premised on the idea of um the trickle-down equality, which has been proven to be nonsense. And indeed, today we have some of the greatest levels of inequality across countries, whether they are high-income countries or low-income countries. Um, so one of our greatest challenges actually is in many ways debunking the mythology and the fallacies that have been built up around uh neoliberalism. The other challenge really, and you know, I I've got here, you know, one of our participants in the paper we we have quite a few quotes that are not attributed to any one participant. And it was a very interesting thing that I think is worth mentioning here. In the review of the paper, we agreed not to, you know, sort of attribute uh to names unless we are, for example, you know, pulling from uh an author who was mentioned, and that author has a specific text, you know, um, that that relates to that quote. Uh, and the reason why is because sometimes you know we repeat things over and over and over again, and then you know the attribution becomes muddied. And it could be that somebody 30 years ago said this, but because we have all come to know this quote very well, you know, we said it, but then now you know next week you're saying that Fatima Kellha said it and Fatima Kelly wasn't the one who said it. So you will find a lot of amazing quotes throughout the paper that are you know unattributed, but there were things that were said in the room. So, you know, these are where we were able to capture verbatim uh things that were said uh in addition just to the general flow of the work uh of the conversations um that were had. And I and I think it's important for us also to kind of, even though we're not giving additional, we're not giving names of individuals, to recognize that this is part of the collective sort of thought leadership of the African feminists in that room. Um, and this is the quote. So the quote really is uh neoliberal capitalism absorbs and terraforms all around it. Neoliberalism must create a world that is conducive to its own existence. And you know, I highlighted this as a verbatim quote in the paper because it really sums up, you know, one of the most pernicious challenges we face. And it really is about how embedded we all are in the neoliberal capitalist world we live in. Um our consumption patterns are the greatest testimony to this. So, you know, we had a fantastic in the convening, we had a fantastic breakdown of uh uh sort of the mobile phone dependency and why that has why that is a classic example of how neoliberal capitalism really has made us all complicit within the system. Um now back in 2021, I think mobile phone penetration on the continent was just under 50%. Um we know it's rapidly increasing, but you know, that's already a sizable amount compared to just even 10 years prior. And we know that these phones that we carry are absolutely a critical part of nearly every aspect of our lives. Some countries more so than others. You know, you look at Kenya, obviously, you know, the sort of the MPESA phenomenon has made uh that such a dependent part of Kenyan life. In other countries, less so, but it's increasing with every single day. And yet we don't really ask questions about the material reality of this phone. And this has different, you know, sort of uh aspects to it. On the one hand, we won't ask questions about, you know, sort of our relationship with the phone in terms of our own sovereignty over it. So when we are asked for updates, you know, these days most people will just update without reading the terms. I remember the days, you know, about 10 years ago when people would maybe take a little bit more time before that they press that update button. We have become so dependent on it, we don't even almost want to know what it says because we know we cannot live without this phone as part of our reality. You know, we don't ask ourselves what those terms are, you know, we don't ask ourselves even what the update is really doing. You know, we just move with it because we have become so dependent on it. And, you know, the mobile phone is a symbol of so much in terms of what neoliberal capitalism means today, in particular the financialization aspect of neoliberal capitalism, where actually the movement of uh money has become critical to this type of capitalism as opposed to the movement even of goods and produce and definitely people. Uh, and then the other aspect of it is that even though we are aware of how problematic the material creation of the phone is, so you know, we know that our our sisters and brothers are suffering in the Congo because of the resources they have that produce these mobile phones, we often will not interrogate that too deeply. And it's because in many ways we can't, you know, to ask people to extricate themselves from this completely, you know, to take a complete ban on something like a mobile phone is to essentially ask everybody to remove themselves from you know their their life in 2025. And a lot of people would not be able to function. And so, you know, one of the greatest challenges is the fact that we are all heavily integrated into the problem of the system. Um, and so there is a real reflection that needs to take place at an individual level as well as at a collective level, but that's without putting any undue emphasis on the responsibility of responsibility on the individual. Because a little bit like what you know happens with sort of the whole recycling thing, uh, you know, the idea that if everyone just recycles, we'll solve the climate crisis, and we know that's rubbish, you know, this is a much bigger structural problem of uh, you know, consumption consumption, extraction, and overproduction by you know the global elites and corporations, etc., in the same way. This is not about saying that you know you yourself, one, can fix the system, you know, just by making some boycotts around a phone. That's not going to happen. But that awareness of it is absolutely critical. That self-awareness is absolutely critical. Um, and then the other aspect of it, you know, there are two other aspects that I want to mention briefly. One is the violence of the system, you know, and the violence of the system is absolutely critical. You know, neoliberal capitalism is a violent system. You cannot deny this. The structure adjustment programs themselves led to a loss of life and an increase in morbidity. Why? Well, because very simply, you know, you can't cut back on something like health, you know, without expecting people to become more sick or to die. You know, if you put wage freezes on doctors, for example, or even any type of healthcare professional, or even any type of healthcare administrator within the system, you know, that is going to lead to a loss in production, a loss in efficiency, because you are putting undue emphasis on those workers. Um, and then in countries where, you know, in some regions, yeah, a rural area will have one surgeon to 10,000 people, and then you have a policy that is asking, you know, for wage freezes, of course, people are going to die and morbidity is going to rise on the back of that. So it is directly violent in that way. Um, and austerity, there's there are more than enough uh studies actually in the global north to show how austerity has led to a physical, you know, a f a physical embodiment of violence. Um, and then when we look at COVID-19, we see that very clearly as well. You know, and and it's not that this is um uh a violence that impacts equally. No, far from it. It impacts based on the intersections of our oppressions and our privileges. So there will be those who are more likely to die than others. You know, if you are in an area without, you are more likely to die. If you are poorer, you are more likely to die, you are more likely to be sick. Um, and we have a gendered and racialized nature to the violence that often puts black women's bodies on the front lines of you know many experiences. And we saw that with Ebola, for example, we did see that with COVID-19. Um, you know, to take ourselves out of the continent. It's no news to anybody that if you were black in the global north, in the UK, in particular, where I currently am based, as well as the US, you were, I think it was four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than anybody else. You know, there is a reason for this. Um, and the system has created itself in a way to make certain lives expendable. And then the final challenge, I will say, in many ways, this is the biggest one, is the atomization and individualism that flows from um from this from this economic system. You know, capitalism more broadly has historically destroyed collectivism and atomizes society into ever smaller units. When we look at the process of industrialization going back several centuries and the urbanization that followed on that, we you know we saw this. It led to uh a severing of extended family models as people moved out of the rural areas into urban centers, um, and it also led to a severing of models of custodianship, for example, over resources and a concentration of resources and wealth ever increasingly into individual hands. It effectively created what we know today as the nuclear family, as the primary model of kind of you know societal organizing. And what you have there is also the primary model of production. And what this does is it puts the onus of responsibility for life and limb on individuals and on small units. So you increasingly stop thinking about yourself as part of a community, you know, and you think of me and my family first, isn't it you know, we have all of these sayings, you know, uh charity begins at home and all this kind of stuff, right? So, and when we talk about family here, we're talking about the immediate increasingly the immediate family. So you, your spouse, and your offspring. Um, and and what that does also is stops us thinking about the wider society, and therefore we stop thinking about the structural inequalities and oppressions that affect all of us, you know, and this is uh a way in which neoliberal capitalism terraforms society in order so that it can reproduce itself. And what it does is it severs in many ways the citizen state compact, but in one direction. So the responsibility of the state, you know, as uh money is cut back from public services, etc., you know, is essentially the state abrogating its responsibility towards its citizens. You know, that responsibility is diminished, and like I said, the onus of responsibility gets put onto the individual. So increasingly you see the individual individual thinking about, you know, for example, their healthcare as something that is only their responsibility. They do not see the state in any way being responsible for that responsibility. Um and that and that is problematic, and you see that happening even in countries, again, like the UK, which has had a wealth, a welfare system for a long time. Um, and you know, the acts acceptance that you know the health healthcare was provided by the state in return for your taxes, and now as the National Health Service is being you know de you know defunded, um, people are looking at private alternatives, so taking that responsibility for healthcare increasingly onto themselves. But that then obviously comes with so many vulnerabilities to the market, and the market is an extremely volatile thing, you know, as we have seen, because we tend to have an economic crash on average every 10 to 15 years. Um, and so you put yourself at the mercy of the market on the back of that. Um, and so you know, if that's happening even in the global north, what is the situation in the global south more broadly, and you know, on our continent where we have many of our healthcare systems still in gestation that have yet to be fully fledged as you know, universal healthcare systems for everybody. Um, but already the mindset has been set that you know, this is all only your responsibility. However, like I said, it's one-sided because ultimately, uh, you know, the state can still call on all the responsibilities of citizenship from you whenever it requires. So it will tax your goods. You know, you wake up one day and there's VAT on some essential product that you you did not want, you know, that you have to have in order to be able to live. It can draft you into the military should it need you, and it can also hold you to patriotic ideals whenever it deems you are being too deviant and punish you in order to send a message, you know, in order to be a deterrent. Um, so it is a one-sided severance of the citizen state compact. Um, and this is also part of the challenge. And part of the challenge actually is our lack of awareness of that process and how it is being played out.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

I absolutely agree with you about the NCDS nature and the one-sidedness also of this, uh, it's an abusive relationship. And that's also why someone in the meeting um reminded us about the idea of necropolitics, that in the same way that the state decides that it will gather our resources to not in turn support our material needs. The state also decides like who lives and who dies and who is also responsible for taking care of the dying. Um I think another thing that I would like us to discuss, like based on your reflections, is also like how can African feminists strategically navigate these power structures and introduce and leverage new spaces, including um yes, yes, policy spaces that's uh all traditional, but also uh academic spaces move beyond these very formal structures of thinking together, go into communities to critique current policies and also share like our theory and praxis.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Yeah, that's a really great question. Um So I think you know, the the one thing we always come back to is the importance of this building solidarity and creating critical mass, right? And it's something that has been a constant theme in in all of my writing and presentations, it feels like for many years now. And it really is important that, you know, at the beginning of our call, I mentioned how important social movements are to me and how they inform my politics, um, my social justice politics, my socialist politics. And the reason why it's because almost everything that you know we sometimes unfortunately take for granted today that has eased inequality and eased oppression and brought about some level of decency and human dignity to the way we live our lives has come on the back of social movements and social movements that often started right from the ground up. You know, these were not social movements that were led by the intelligentsia, although the intelligentsia, you know, have played their part in those processes. Um but without a doubt, you know, that collective power can never ever be overemphasized, the importance of it. Um, solidarity, collaboration, finding commonalities beyond our differences are. Key. You know, another one of the quotes, and I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly in the paper, I think is we will come at you with all of our differences, um, in all our differences. And maybe even, you know, that could be another way of saying that could be, you know, we will come at you in all of our multiplicities. Because really it is about understanding where our key common areas of action, of engagement should be, and concentrating and organizing around that. Now, on a continent as richly diverse as ours, there will be so many of these, you know, and how we pull together, you know, enough solidarity to decide which ones we are going to move on at this point in time, which ones we are going to maybe move on at a later point in time, is the big way forward. The convening that we had is part of a process to a certain extent of maybe identifying what those will be and then engaging with the very many who are organizing already in different ways across the continent. You know, we talked about the mobile phone and how problematic it is from the standpoint of what it represents in terms of the reproduction of the capitalist system. You know, it's very material existence. But actually, it is, you know, the digital space is one that has had many blessings as well as many, you know, um drawbacks in our ability to mobilize and in our ability to engage collectively. And we have to find ways really to utilize that in really effective um um ways as part of the engagement. But it really cannot be overstated enough how important it is for us to pull together our collective power. Quite frankly, without it, nothing would will work. And you know, and by collective power, this can take on various forms. It could be collective power of grassroots movements across a particular area of engagement. There are many organizations, for example, working on something to do with extractivism on the continent, the injustices of that, and they have ideas and solutions for what the alternative to that could be. And many of them are working in isolation. How do we draw them all up together? There are some organizations that are trying to pull all of them together. What do we need to do in order to maximize that effort, for example? Um, but then there's also another form of collaboration. You know, something that I talk about in one of my papers that I wrote for the uh African Continental Free Trade Area, for example, was the importance of a policy of solidarity, you know, across our actual member states. Um, you know, our member states exist, you know, some of us have problems with the member states in terms of you know who they represent, the way they were created. We know they were none of them were really created with our say-so, but our uh you know, holdover of the colonial powers, etc. But they are there. And nothing can move forward unless those countries are willing to come together and draw some very clear red lines collectively on how they engage with the rest of the world. Because we are within a very clear geopolitical power order. You know, let's not pretend otherwise. You know, there is no equality between nations across the world. Um, you know, the very institutions that I was talking about earlier represent that. The fact that there's a Security Council with only a certain number of countries on it in the UN is an example of that. You know, the fact that the IMF is led by only a certain number of countries, you know, um, all of which are from the global north, is another example of that. So we we have to be very clear of what the power relationship is at the geopolitical level. So there's also a need for solidarity and collaboration there. So there are multiple layers and levels of collaborative solidarity and collaboration that can be occurring at the same time. And for African feminists and African women working in on the economy in different ways, we need to decide what our touch points are. So recognizing what the key touch points of resistance to rally around will be a big part of that. You know, whether it's fighting against uh our indebtedness and the injustices of African debt, whether it's you know against unjust taxation and ilitial financial flows, whether it's you know, looking, like I said, at the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement, which is you know this enormous sort of framework that could any day now start to move very quickly, you know, without people even realizing it. Um, and really taking on uh the uh how can we describe it? The juggernauts who are at the heart of many of these processes. You know, there are beer moths at the part of the at the heart of these processes. We talked about this in the convenings, you know, individuals as well as institutions and corporations who have enormous influence over what happens in our continent and in our countries. Uh, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa was one example of that, you know, where we know that there are an undue amount of influence on this from individuals like Bill Gates, who has got a vested interest in proposing, you know, in pushing forward AGRA. But then organizations um, you know, like AFSA, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, which has done immense critique, you know, very solid, rigorous critique of why Agra is not working, because its focus on food security does not have a real food sovereignty. So, you know, the idea that we are also in control as Africans of our food production and you know and what goes into our bellies, um, because it doesn't really have that and it's so heavily driven by other actors, external actors needs from the continent. That research and you know that work is not as well known as the influence, you know, of an individual who is what the second richest man on the world. So we have to find ways to strategize around what are huge juggernauts in terms of um of power imbalances. Uh and you can't do that in small groups, you know, you definitely can't do it as an individual, and you can't even do it in small groups. You have to do it in very, very significant collectives, and that's why building critical mass was something that came in many ways out of uh uh our conversations there. Um and then I suppose there are a couple of other areas, you know, which are quite critical, you know, fighting for you know, and in the present while engineering the future, and I know we'll talk about that a little bit, but then also the importance of organizing around African reparative justice, you know, and the movement around that was something that came up very, very strongly on the agenda within the convening. Um, and you know, the reason for that is because I think, you know, for a lot of people, perhaps the idea of reparative justice is something that we only really talk about, uh, you know, maybe in in relation to the slave trade, when actually it's that and so much more. You know, it is the entire sort of you know, last five, six hundred years of extraction and exploitation that has that Africa has been at the mercy of as a result of the colonial project and the enduring legacy of that post-independence. Um, and there is a whole framework for engaging with that, which we probably don't have enough time to go into in any great depth here, but which you will find, you know, really we talked through at great length in the paper. So it's definitely worth going to the paper to unpack that.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Um I agree. The idea of reparations, yeah, like you say, it has always been associated with either the slave trade or uh colon, like colonialism. But the truth is, like you said, because extract is extractivism continues by these same people, and also like climate damage also continues by these same people. Like the conversation should not stop. It's not a thing that happened to our forefathers, it continues to affect us to, you know, today. Okay, yeah, that's exactly like uh actually, before we discuss like what other touch points or entry points we can ask our fellow sisters to coalesce around. I think a thing that people need to also remember is that when you think about movement building, you need to think about it beyond the way organizing on the continent, especially since the 90s, has been pigeon-holed for the sake of um for the sake of responding to these power structures, because you thought if you responded to them in the language that they understand or organized in the ways that they understood, then it would be more effective. But what it has done is to continue to create this idea of there can only be one. So there can only be one type of people that we we negotiate with and they must look like us and sound like us. And we really need to move uh beyond that um as a collective because that's some of the ways like like our power and our voices are being uh flattened and stolen from us. Um could you like jumping off of that could you also suggest like some other like entry points that we can suggest, especially from a movement or a collective perspective, um to continue this process that we started or strategic disruption in world building?

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Yeah. Yeah, so just uh a view on the kind of um the world building and the need for us to continue to engage whilst engineering our world building. So, you know, the first thing that the paper recognizes is the process of world building, you know, in terms of the solutions themselves, has already started. You know, many African feminists have already written on what the alternative could look like, you know, and what it should look like. And we have examples actually that we can pull from, you know, at the micro level of how this could actually look like if we were to take this forward. Um, and there were in there are many sort of feminist alternative ways of being that are already out there, you know. So it's not that there's a huge amount of work that needs to be done in that. There is a process of how we engineer it to that that we have to do. But in the meantime, we also have to be very cognizant of the fact that processes are happening often without our voice that we cannot ignore. And the reason why is because if we don't stay on top of those things, um, we could wake up and find out that the decisions have already been made, and then we're too, they're too far down the track for us to even be able to do anything about it. It's one of the reasons why I mentioned the Continental Free Trade Area Agreement, the real importance of watching that regularly and being critical of it and you know, pulling out where the inconsistencies are and making sure that African feminist voices are really in you know being heard wherever we can in that process is so important. You know, just to feel that it's happening and there's nothing we can do about it now is is not good enough. Um, similarly, with other processes on the continent, and there are several that are continuously happening, both whether it's at the national level, at you know, the regional level, or even the broader continental level. And of course, the global level always has these impacts on us. But um, you know, one of the things that within the uh the paper, we we have a variety of different kinds of entry points for where we can continue. So for the series itself, you know, so the next convenings we feel we need to look at, you know, what are the main areas we want to disrupt and world build in order to create uh a consensus. You know, there are many, like I said, and we have many battlefronts that we're engaging with. So we have to come to a point where we pick up what we believe are the dominant areas for strategic disruption in order to disrupt the system and then to be able to find an entry point within that disruption to really vocalize and amplify what the solutions we believe are, the alternatives, you know, or the realities that we believe should be in place, uh could be, you know. So we have we have to ask ourselves some key questions within that, you know. What, you know, how do we disrupt? You know, how far do we dismantle? You know, what is the process of dismantlement, you know, um, and then what do we need for the building blocks, you know, and how do we mitigate against some of the challenges we will come across the way? You know, we have to really start thinking like engineers in this. Um, and the how of disruption is really critical, but we have to continue exposing and evidencing while we go along. You know, so we have to continue our research of the current system in order to continuously show why it's flawed. And then, you know, there are different areas that kind of need to be a part of our work all the way throughout. One is, you know, that area of embedding reparative justice. And, you know, like you said, it isn't just about the past, it's not about something that happened and then ended, you know, in 1957, you know, when Ghana first became independent and then subsequent countries became independent. It has been a continuation. We know that neocolonialism is a real thing. You know, it is happening and it and it has, and in fact, its insidiousness and the way it the nuanced way it plays out is all the more dangerous for it in many ways. And it's one of the reasons why we have had such huge challenges because it's very, very hard to pin down. And the reparative justice movement has a framework that we can genuinely engage with. So that is something that we are recommending needs to be a part of our conversations going forward. Um, very critically, we need to initiate and nourish intergenerational and cross-movement alliances. This is so important, you know. Like I mentioned earlier, you know, whatever it is that you yourself are doing, you know, in your individual sense or in your uh small unit sense or even in your bigger organization sense, go and do it bigger with somebody else, and then go and do it bigger with somebody else on top of that and multiply and mushroom. This is so important, and having conversations you know across our differences is is very important. So, you know, any one person will know what it is they are doing. Think about yourself as one part of a collective, and that is when things will really start to change. Um, and of course, we need to have some conversations and coalition building across the global south, actually, because we are not the only ones fighting these battles, you know, across Latin America, across Asia, you know, these battles are constant. Okay, so when we talk about violence, for example, the violence of the system, you know, the way in which women's bodies as cheap labor, you know, are part of the violence of the system, we have seen, you know, at its utmost in South Asia, for example. And if our continent industrializes, you know, within this century, it is likely that we will follow the same route unless we do something about it. Um, and so how we engage with our feminist sisters across other continents, recognizing our differences again, and again, you know, the nuances of the way in which we operate within the geopolitical order are really important. Um, and then those very practical actions towards strategic world building, you know, come into being. And this is something that wherever you are sitting, you can look at and say, ah, is this something I could do? So one is mapping existing African feminist economic world building. Like I said, there's a lot out there, but actually it's in disparate places. And because the internet itself, which is our primary mode of extracting information, is itself a colonized space. And it is, because you know, you use, we we are currently almost entirely dependent on one search engine, for example, and that search engine is open to you know search engine optimization, which is something you pay for. You know, you put a keyword into you know that particular search engine, and what will happen is the same lot of people will come, the same lot of organizations or whatever will come at the top. And often where African feminists and African women's voices are heard, you know, in their sovereignty, in their full sovereignty, you will not find immediately at the top of those searches. And so we need to start counteracting that. You know, at Nowie, we have you know started doing this with our knowledge portal, you know, where we identify um and and and make available, you know, through linkages directly to the writing, to the you know, to the to the presentations, you know, including verbal and multimedia of African women's writing on the economy. Um, but we all need to start doing this more. Now, how we do this is something that would be a great conversation that needs to be had. You know, do we have one place that we do this? Do we have multiple places that are doing this, and then we somehow come together so that we do not end up working across each other and duplicating? Um, a very, very interesting direct kind of thing that needs to happen also is uh, and then this was a recommendation that came through from one of the members of the uh uh uh convening, is the establishment of a feminist media watch. Uh, we know how powerful the media is in our understanding of you know what economic models are considered normal or good or just the way it should be. Neoliberalism, you know, is supported actually by a very, very powerful media. And so we need to counter you know that a proliferation essentially of what of what is cultural imperialism, you know, by essentially monitoring and exposing where, how the media supports the neoliberal status quo and why it is important for us to have alternative voices to that media really reach the masses. Um, and then of course, we need to think about how we develop a feminist digital and data infrastructure. Data is gonna be one of the biggest things we have to deal with in the future. You know, we didn't unpack this as much within the convening, but I definitely think it will come up, and we know that the relationship with AI is integral to that. So, how we engage as feminists in the you know the emerging digital uh realities and in the you know the big data infrastructure that exists out there is absolutely critical. Um one area that we have a huge, huge challenge in is actually in our spaces of scholarship and learning. You know, heterodox economics, which includes feminist economics, is not widely available in many academic institutions. And I will argue that's not just an African uh problem. That is a problem that I have seen across the global north as well. Um, some institutions are better than others, but more broadly, what you will find is that neoliberal dogma dominates many of the curricula of our academic institutions. And we talked about this in the convening. And so, you know, a key recommendation is you know, how can we disrupt that and ensure that feminists and African feminists, in particular, economic curricula is in those spaces as well as in the spaces of governance and in policy. Um, and then there's one final recommendation which was again really, really specific and and I absolutely love, which is developing a feminist observatory on neoliberal violence. And the reason why is because we know that neoliberalism is violent and we do have some statistics that support this, but we don't have enough. Now, many of us know it intrinsically, inherently, because we live it, right? And if you sit down with people's testimonies, the evidence is there, but we need far more than that in order to be able to make the case and in order to make the disruption. And so this is an area where far more work is needed, and there's something where whatever it is you're doing in your engagement, you can actually um uh move forward that. And I think if you are new to this, so this is if you're, for example, listen to this podcast and this is your first real kind of conversation that you're hearing about neoliberal neoliberalism and the importance of going beyond it, then you know, I what I would argue really is just to read as many African feminists who have written on this, watch as many keynote speeches, presentations, and there's far more now since the pandemic of that of African feminists speaking on this. At the end of the paper, we have uh a salutations page where we try to kind of acknowledge many of the key African feminists whose thought leadership itself, the thought leadership at the Jacaranda Hotel in this convening, were influenced by. And, you know, and and even that salutations page acknowledges that we cannot name everybody, you know. That would be like a whole book, right? So it's impossible for us to even name everybody. So, you know, limitations within that. But even go to that salutations page and pull out some of that. You mentioned necropolitics uh earlier, Elizabeth, you know, and that was Akil Membe, right? A Cameroonian writer and thinker who, you know, whose work on necropolitics uh was brought into the room that day. You know, go away, read that, you know, read the work of Lin or some way, you know, go and watch the amazing keynotes by you know Lebohang Peko. You know, that is a starting point for anyone who is coming to this new. And I and I thoroughly, thoroughly recommend it because it is one of the most nourishing things that I think you know you can do if this is something that really interests you.

SPEAKER_00 52:04

And I I completely agree with that. And also like just the reminder that the work is intergenerational. So you don't have to feel that you have to come with like you know, 20, 30 years of experience to be able to start enjoying the movement. Exactly. Yeah, because we absolutely yeah, we leave the violence every single day, it means that that's like that's enough. That's your that's your call to sign up and you know, do what needs to be done, exactly. Because the intergenerational um cooperation, collaboration is what will save us from you know movement burnout. Because that's another thing that we have to be very real about, yeah. So if you're more energized or you've worked in the in the in the space for many years and you need to be re-inspired, like there's there's room and there's opportunity for us to be able to come in and tap out when it gets too much because we trust that everyone else we are working alongside. And walking and working alongside is also going to be able to come in and support each other. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

Yes, absolutely. I yeah, I mean it's so important because the work itself is traumatic. You know, it is traumatic being in a space where you are dealing with these issues every single day, you know, whether you are reading them or writing them, or whether you are on the front lines of active activism, it's really it can be really traumatic. And one of the great traumas, particularly of those who maybe are, you know, are sort of writing about these things and taking it, trying to take it into spaces of influence and then continuously being shut down, continuously being ignored, you know, continuously being made to feel uh you know what what's this you're coming with? It's it's not gonna make sense in you know, in in this framework that has already been created. It's exhausting, it's demoralizing. And that and this is another reason why collectives are important. The collective is for the collective power and the critical mass, but is and but you know, when we talk about solidarity, it's that solidarity of caring for one another, actually, through the pain of the process. Um, and the intergenerational side is so important because of yes, burnout. But also, very critically to say that you know, when we talk about intergenerational, and I thought your point about you know you don't have to have 20 or 30 years of experience is so important, but also you don't have to have 20 or 30 years of experience, but you can also be over 50 without that 20 or 30 years of experience and still be starting. So, again, you know, when we say that we're not just talking to the younger ones, right? You know, we're not just saying to the younger ones, oh, don't be afraid to come join. We're also talking to women maybe who have spent entire lives doing something else, you know, or maybe coming at this from a different perspective. And now for them to feel actually, you know, I can even start this at a later age, you know, I can engage with this at a later age because sometimes there is stigma uh, you know, when you are older that uh, you know, I can't, I can't, I can't be, you know, making this deviation now, you know. Uh and then this is how you know you'll find that people feel that they that they are forced maybe to become more conservative as they get older, when actually maybe they don't even want to be more conservative, but they are too afraid to actually become less conservative because they feel that the space is not for them, you know, then the new space is only for the younger ones. So that intergenerational back and forth has many layers to it, and we need to be open and embracing of all of it.

SPEAKER_00 55:24

So to continue on that very hopeful note, um, and to wind up our wonderful conversation, I'd like you to share with us like what your hope and contribution towards a collective vision for the continent and its people and our freedom looks like for you.

SPEAKER_01 55:43

Okay, so well, first of all, like I have to say that hope is the real warrior flex. Uh, this is something that I've been thinking about quite a lot. To have hope is really to have the strength because it is so easy not to have the hope. And it's also okay, you know, to go through periods where we don't have the hope. And this is why the collective is important because somebody will step in and pick up the button of that hope or carry on the button of that hope, you know, while you take your break and you take your rest away from it. But it really is the real warrior flex, you know, being strong and being this or that, you know, however we define strength, actually hope is it. And the reason why is because deep down, you know, I think we all believe, those of us who are doing this work, we all believe that we are going to win in the end. Otherwise, why would we do it? I think we believe that. Some of us may not know when, right? We don't know if it will happen, you know, in the next 10 years, next 15, next 20, even maybe not within our lifetime. Maybe not even within our children's lifetime, although that is something that I do not want to think of that it's that far down the road. But there is this belief that we will win. And you know, there are these uh kind of uh posters and sayings that you sometimes see kind of uh around the place and on the internet. I think there is one uh where is it I've been to the future, we won. You know, so I've been to the future, we won. So this idea that actually this the way it is right now, the oppression, the inequality, the injustice, the unfairness of it, this this is not the way humanity is going to finish itself off. This this is not going to be it. The undeniable belief in it, you know, the immovable belief that it's this will not be the end game is such an important thing to keep on believing in. And that I think is what keeps me going. Sometimes I'm a very short-term pessimist, you know, and I can look ahead and I'll say, this is definitely gonna get worse before it gets better. Because, you know, once you've been doing it for a long time and you know the way the economic system plays itself out, you can see, you know, how the structures are eventually going to, you know, sort of lay down the cards and you can see who's gonna suffer, and you can tell that, you know, it at the moment things are not in place yet to halt that. But then it's also the belief that that can be turned around in time, but also the hope that there are catalysts that sometimes come in that can change the game without you even realizing it, right? Sometimes some of the greatest social changes have occurred on the back of catalysts that came out of the blue and social movements that were just slogging away, slogging away at one, you know, one or two issues or you know, a whole variety of different issues for decades, maybe even centuries, in some in some cases, you know. And here, just to give a couple of tangible examples of that, you know, employment rights, many of the things that we take for granted today, you know, such as the eight-hour working day, you know, the weekend. There was a time when none of that existed, and we would all be completely, you know, burnt-out individuals now with nothing, you know, to give us any reprieve. These things had to be fought for. Some people even died for these things, and there were people slogging away at those things for decades when everybody around them was telling them this was utopia they were asking for. So when people tell you what you're asking for is utopia, remember there was a time when others were told that the very things that we have today as part of our, you know, sort of working rights, they were also told that that was utopia, but they kept on doing it because they kept on hoping, they kept on believing, and then catalysts came into play that gave an opening in order to make it a reality. So that is the hope, that is the belief, you know, the belief that yes, you know, I've gone to the future, we won, and I can see that we won. I believe in that. Um, on an individual level, you know, what I do more than anything else is research, you know, study, thought leadership, constructive critique, exposure of you know, the system, you know, putting together as many solutions. As possible to be tested, to be worked through, but very critically also supporting the exposure of thought leadership of other African women. So working again as a collective in order to ensure that we are all continuously being made visible and being heard, you know, who are working on the economy, you know, whether we're talking about scholars, activists, advocates, programmers, you know, whatever it is we are doing, you know, being part of that and amplifying that as much as possible. And for somebody else, for another African feminist, you know, their thing that they're doing will be something completely different. You know, they may be on the continent right then, right now, so they can actually get to the front line of one particular issue and dedicate themselves to that issue, you know, completely in different spaces, etc. So we all come with our different things. Um I think what we need to do is do it well as individuals, but very critically do it as part of collectives whenever we can. You know, that is what is going to make the difference.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:02

Thank you, Fatima, for constantly reinforcing the need for collective action over individualistic um practice, as has been the case for so long. Um, I hope our readers will remember that. That like that's that's the way we get to the future that we want. That's the way we see ourselves. Um, yeah, we make like deliberate choices and we make them together. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your thoughts. Thank you for like your constant presence, not only like in Naui, but also in the space generally, and that your reflections have always been able to like move us forward as a collective in such beautiful and expansive ways.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:44

Thank you. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. It is my eternal honor to be a part of a collective of African feminists working in the economy and to be a part of Naui as well, in particular. So, yeah, the the the privilege is all mine. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:02

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.