Through my organization, World Resources Institute Africa, we support women entrepreneurs to bring prosperity, sustainable livelihoods and environmental restoration to their communities through Africa Landscape Restoration Initiative and Reset Local, launched this year by WRI, which aims to accelerate the restoration of degraded lands across Africa. Women like the three founders of Exotic-EPZ in Nairobi, who process macadamia nuts from 7,000 farmers across Kenya to sell around the world. Women like those in the Green Belt Movement network in Maragua, Kenya, are planting bamboo as a source of biomass and an opportunity for entrepreneurship.
In this project, I align myself with the work my mother undertook with the Green Belt Movement: empowering women to mobilize, regenerate their environment and stand up to powerful forces that want to marginalize them.
Like the women of Kenya, India and Argentina, we are on the verge of losing everything we hold dear – our lives, our heritage, our livelihoods, the future of our children and their children, and much of the non-human world. This moment calls for the feminist qualities of unity, cooperation, focused action and shared understanding. Will we maintain an order that has led to this terrible stalemate, or will we demand a different future, however risky, in the face of political structures that appear violent and entrenched but are in fact fragile?
Africa has enormous potential: a vibrant, young population and an abundance of resources — solar or mineral. It is up to us, as Africans, to pave the way for a green, resilient climate for the future that provides us with energy independence, eradicates poverty and protects nature.
My mother articulated a belief that millions of women continue to embody, even if they have never heard these words: “Those of us who understand, who feel strongly, must not grow weary. We must not give up. We must persevere. I always say the onus is on those who know. We are the ones who have to take action.”
Or, as Professor Mũgo reminded us: “The women are coming.”
Wanjira Mathai is managing director for Africa and global partnerships at the World Resources Institute. She is also the current president of the Wangari Maathai Foundation and a former president of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya.
