A book honors 12 African women who dedicate their talent and career to empowering other women


MADRID, 23 (SERVIMEDIA)

The journalist Raquel Rodríguez de Bujalance has published ‘Mujeres de ébano’ (Rialp), a book that shows a dozen of the “exciting lives of women” that Africa hides, and who are capable of using their brilliant professional career in the promotion of other african women.

After traveling through these countries and learning about their lives first-hand, the author echoes what these women have told her about the tribes, customs and traditions of these lands, and discovers the inner strength that drives these entrepreneurs and pioneers to spend his life for others. Reading these stories, the reader will be convinced that Africa not only “has a solution” but also has much to teach a Western society mired in its own crises.

The author is part of the board of directors of Harambee NGDO, where she has collaborated since its inception and to whom she has assigned the copyright of ‘Mujeres de ébano’, whose publication coincides with the organization’s 20th anniversary.

In fact, the work is inspired by African women that Harambee rewards annually with its promotion awards for women, who far from forgetting their origins after reaching the professional peak, help theirs. “Seeing their life you are impressed, they could be lining up living in the West, but instead they are in their countries helping people who have not had opportunities and the most vulnerable,” Raquel Rodríguez de Bujalance told Servimedia.

The journalist dismantled stereotypes towards Africa, a continent made up of “55 very different countries” and underlined “the capacity for resistance, the positive sense in the face of adversity and the spirituality of Africans in general”. “Every African, the first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is thank God for the new day, whatever God it is; if things don’t go to the right, they go to the left, up or to the center, they live up to date, they have to make ends meet; And of the women in the book, their faith impresses me a lot: they don’t have a complicated life, they dedicate themselves to others, whatever religion they are, like a Muslim who could be studying in Spain at the CSIC and is in her country”.

EMPOWER GIRLS

Another example is the Nigerian economist Franca Ovadje, the last Harambee prizewinner, who has allocated the funds from the award to work on ‘TecPower’, a project that seeks to “empower” African secondary school girls from public schools in urban slums in disciplines ‘ stem’ (science, technology, engineering and mathematics, for its acronym in English).

In her many visits to the continent with the NGO, the author has observed that many rural areas of those countries are “almost in prehistory”, but urban areas “have a tremendous boost”, also thanks to technology, an impulse that now, lamented the writer, it can be seen diminished by the effect of the war in Ukraine. “It is affecting a lot and is going to cause a tremendous famine” in Africa, a destination highly dependent on Ukrainian cereal, among other reasons.

The book will be presented this Wednesday, October 26 at 7:30 p.m. at CaixaBank’s All in one Madrid, in an event in which the journalist will be accompanied by Bisila Bokoko, considered one of the most influential women in American business. She is the former director of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in New York and CEO of BBES International and founder of BBLP, Bisila Bokoko African Literacy Project, which promotes literacy in rural Africa. She also collaborates with the United Nations in supporting entrepreneurs.


A book honors 12 African women who dedicate their talent and career to empowering other women