Duffy, Deirdre, Coast, Ernestina 
ORCID: 0000-0002-8703-307X, Berro Pizzarossa, Lucía and Irakoze, Judicaelle
(2025)
Finding colleagues, finding home, finding energy: rethinking African feminist engagements with international politics through vernacular rights cultures. Reflections from a study of pro-abortion activism and allyship.
International Feminist Journal of Politics.
ISSN 1461-6742
(In Press)
Abstract
African feminist pro-choice abortion activism and political mobilisation is shaped by colonial legacies in a multitude of ways. A key area where the sustained colonialist dynamics is visible is in the relationship between pro-choice abortion activists and organisations funded by and/or located in the Global North. How activists in the African space navigate these relationships and infrastructures has been a sustained site of critique within decolonial and post-colonial literature. However, accounts from pro-choice abortion activists and allies working on abortion access in Africa, particularly those working in and with communities, are limited. As a result, Afrofeminist experiences of and perspectives on navigating transnational pro-choice abortion activist infrastructures are invisibilise. This paper centres these perspectives, using them to identify and theorise the complex reasons why and process through which pro-choice abortion activists and allies navigate transnational collaborations in the African space. Inspired by the work of Madhok on vernacular rights cultures we work to conceptually account for how members and allies of one pro-aboriton African movement - the Mobilising Activist for Medication Abortion (MAMA) - utilise transnational collaborations including Global North and Global South actors even though they recognise the colonialist traces within this space. Through centring activist and allies’ contributions and Afrofeminist perspectives, particularly those of Tamale and Ossome, we contend that MAMA strategically engages with international collaborations to challenge anti-abortion politics that have gained traction in the African postcolony where abortion has been positioned as ‘un-African’. Given the limited evidence from contemporary pro-choice abortion activists in Africa within academic literature, the paper highlights the need for conversations on relationships between the different actors in this space to centre African feminist voices and work from Afrofeminist perspectives.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | International Development |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Nov 2025 11:00 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Nov 2025 15:27 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/130226 |
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