Introducing Uhuru Watch: Documenting African Women in Politics
It’s hard not to lead with the most exciting news so let’s jump into it, shall we? In case you missed the announcement, Document Women was selected to receive funding via the News Equity Fund by Google News Initiative!
This is part of GNI’s drive to provide support and opportunities to news organisations like us that primarily serve underrepresented communities.
What does this mean for us?
We’re officially launching our political column titled Uhuru Watch.
Uhuru Watch is a round-the-clock situation room focusing on three things; women, politics, and Africa.
When we sought to document women running various offices in the 2023 Nigerian General Elections, we faced a significant information drought on women.
No photos, no biographies, no news mentions, or even social media handles. These women didn’t exist anywhere else besides an INEC list.
Why is Uhuru Watch important?
In September, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) released its final list of candidates for the 2023 polls, naming only 374 women running for the seats in the National Assembly. The list highlights the poor representation of women in politics in Africa’s most populous country and one of the world’s largest democracies.
However, our team’s efforts to find information about these women online reiterates this point, as there are no pictures, few news mentions, and almost no publicity by their political parties. This shows how women are perceived and often excluded in Nigeria’s political landscape.
According to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2011
- Women’s views and voices are marginalized in world news media
- Men’s voices dominate in hard news
- Men dominate as spokespersons and experts
The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2005 findings also illustrate how gender biases and prejudices likely influence news content. Women are very unlikely to be the central focus of a story, news stories are more likely to reinforce than challenge gender stereotypes, and gender equality is not considered newsworthy.
As an organisation, our core mandate is to document women and influence change – and we have done this through storytelling.
On documenting women daily…
We started this journey as an online movement in 2017 using the hashtag #DocumentWomen to compel more people to document women’s stories. After we officially launched in 2021, we became our call to action.
Since then, we’ve celebrated our first anniversary with a new brand identity and won some awards.
We won the 2021 TIERS Allyship Award…
We also won the NALAFEM Prize for Digital Justice, along with a $3,000 grant
Some of our staff have won awards too.
We’ve made even more films and won more awards.
See also: Sanitary Aid Nigeria publishes report on Period Poverty Sponsored by Document Women
We’re excited to join the GNI alumni. Here’s to reshaping the media, one woman at a time
