Africa, Feminism and the Politics of Development

                                                                    Photo Courtesy: United Nations_UN71119627

Each September, world leaders gather at the United Nations to tell the story of their nations to the world. As a Ghanaian, I listened carefully to President John Mahama’s 2025 UN General Assembly speech, where he called for global equity in climate financing and demanded reforms to structures that disadvantage Africa. His words, “the future is African”, did more than offer hope; they situated Africa at the center of debates about development, representation, and justice. What he said at the UN resonates with the feminist and postcolonial critiques, which challenge us to rethink how power and knowledge shape the Global South.

Postcolonial approaches to development emphasize that colonial legacies still define what counts as progress. McEwan notes that development discourses often cast the South as “backward” and dependent, ignoring local forms of knowledge and agency (McEwan, 2001). Mahama’s speech challenges this framing by emphasizing that Africa is not peripheral but essential to the future global order. Yet the very need to assert this claim demonstrates the persistence of structures that continue to marginalize African voices in institutions like the UN Security Council, where there is no African representative with a population of over 1 billion. 

Additionally, feminist critiques argue that representations of “Third World women” in Western scholarship often reduce them to victims, erasing the diversity of their lives and struggles (Mohanty, 2004). The critique corroborates with Mahama’s insistence that Africa should no longer be represented only through images of poverty and dependency. Just as feminist scholarship demands that women’s voices be recognized in their own historical and cultural contexts, Africa’s complexity and resilience need to be acknowledged globally.

Spivak’s article – Can the subaltern speak? – further explicate how certain voices are silenced. She argues that marginalized voices are often doubly silenced, both by colonial powers and by national or elite discourses (Spivak, 1988). Mahama’s role at the UN illustrates this dilemma. On the one hand, he speaks for Africa on the world stage; on the other, everyday African women, workers, and migrants remain unheard. In fact, he insists on the recognition of African migrants’ contributions worldwide, which echoes the challenge of creating spaces where those at the margins can truly speak for themselves rather than being spoken for. 

For instance, the struggles of Wayúu women resisting “green colonialism” in Colombia reinforce the dangers of development that disregards local ontologies (Ramirez et al. 2023). The Wayúu women’s insistence on living in harmony with the environment mirrors the environmental struggles of African women, such as the Green Belt Movement in Kenya or women-led land rights campaigns in Ghana. Both cases reveal how women’s activism embodies what Ramirez and colleagues call “feminist decoloniality”- a rejection of extractive logics disguised as progress (Ramirez et al., 2023, p. 939). Mahama’s critique of the financial system “rigged against Africa” aligns with this concern: development initiatives cannot simply be imposed from outside without reinforcing colonial dynamics.

Taken together, development is not a neutral process but a contested terrain shaped by histories of colonialism, gendered power, and unequal representation. The consistent theme is the struggle for voice, whether it is women resisting homogenizing narratives, Indigenous communities opposing green colonialism, or African leaders demanding equity in global governance. Mahama’s declaration that “another world is not only possible, she is on her way” reiterates the optimism of decolonial feminists who insist on imagining futures beyond dependency and dispossession (Ramirez et al., 2023).

For me, it is not enough to critique Western dominance; we must also amplify African feminist voices, grassroots movements, and everyday practices of resistance. Ghana’s president’s speech pushes us to imagine a development story authored from the Global South, one that recognizes Africa not as a problem to be solved but as a source of solutions, visions, and leadership.

References

Green Belt Movement (2023). Empowering Africa: Strategies for Climate Action. Retrieved from            https://www.greenbeltmovement.org/node/999

Mahama, J. D. (2025, September 25). Message to the 80th session of the United Nations General            Assembly. United Nations General Assembly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq39-8i8Y2w

McEwan, C. (2001). Postcolonialism, feminism and development: Intersections and dilemmas. Progress in Development Studies, 1(2), 93–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/146499340100100201

Mohanty, C. T. (2004). “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial

Discourses” Pp. 17-41 in Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing

Solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ramírez, J., Vélez-Zapata, C. P., & Maher, R. (2024). Ramirez, J., Vélez-Zapata, C. P., & Maher, R. (2024). Green colonialism and decolonial feminism: A study of Wayúu women’s resistance in La Guajira. Human Relations, 77(7), 937-964.

Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In The Post Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Griffiths, G, Tiffin, H, & Ashcroft, B. (pp. 24–28). London, Routledge.

World Population Review (2025). World Population Review. Retrieved from                                https://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/africa

Yirrah, N. A (n.d). Ghana needs a grievance mechanism to secure women’s land rights. Retrieved from https://stand4herland.org/ghana-grievance-mechanism/