3 Leadership Journeys ONE Story

Dr. Mary Okelo of Kenya is founder and Executive Director of Makini Schools. She was the first woman bank manager in Kenya; was founding member and first chair of the Kenya Women’s Finance Trust (the largest micro-finance organization in Kenya). She was vice president of Women’s World Banking in New York, USA, and the first woman to be appointed senioradvisor to the president of the Africa Development Bank based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

She has held positions on the boards of various organisations locally and internationally; was a Woman 4 Africa Ambassador for East Africa in the field of education; was Millennium Development Ambassador for Teachers Without Borders; and received the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Eastern Africa Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. Her success story as Executive Director of Makini Schools is the subject of a Case Study in Success at Columbia University’s Business School; and the Swedish government has consulted her on how to improve performance in multi-cultural institutions.

Maria Munir Yusuf of Ethiopia is the Executive Director of the Association for Women’s Sanctuary and Development (AWSAD), which runs four safe houses for female victims of violence; and is one of only two women members serving with twelve men at the Union of Ethiopian Elders. She served as a judge of the high court of Ethiopia; was a founder and board member of the Union of Ethiopian Women Charitable Associations; and was chair of the board of the Network of

Ethiopian Women’s Associations. Maria has received many national and global awards for her commendable work in providing services to survivors of violence. In 2015, she was awarded the Women of Excellence Award by the Ethiopia Association of Women in Business in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the advancement of women’s rights in Ethiopia.

Dr. Kadi Sesay of Sierra Leone has a background in academia, government, and politics. She has held several leadership positions, including head of department, Fourah Bay College, Warden of Female Students, Fourah Bay College, Chairperson, National Commission for Democracy and Human Rights, Minister of Development and Economic Planning, Minister of Trade and Industry, Regional Women’s Leader in the Sierra Leone People’s Party, Deputy National Chairperson and Leader of the Sierra Leone People’s Party. She was vice- presidential candidate for the Sierra Leone People’s Party in the 2012 general and presidential elections.

Dr. Ruth Bamela Engo of Cameroon is co-founder and president of African Action on AIDS (AAA) that supports youth and rural communities affected by HIV and AIDS, malaria, and waterborne diseases, and sponsors orphaned girls to go to school and university. She worked at the United Nations in New York for a period of twenty years, holding various senior positions. She co-founded the UN Advocates for African Food Security was co-founder and president of the UN Mothers’ Association. She continues to serve the United Nations in an advisory capacity. She is a former member of the Executive Committee of the Club du Rome.

Priscilla Misihairambwi of Zimbabwe, an opposition politician in her country, has represented her party, the Movement for Democratic Change, in parliament for sixteen years. She entered politics at a young age and was elected Councillor at the age of thirty. She became Secretary General of the party in her mid-thirties. She was the first woman member of parliament to be appointed to the government’s Public Accounts committee. She was the only woman on the negotiating team for the Zimbabwe Unity Government of ZANU Patriotic Front and the MDC, and she played a big role in the constitutional review process. She served as Minister for Regional Integration and International Cooperation during the unity government. Priscilla has also helped to found many women’s organizations that address women in politics, HIV and AIDS and other civic movements for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

“Women are not inferior in any respect to men and God created both with potentials and when women strive hard, they can achieve the potential and even get to the top. Women have the natural mothering qualities of which, when nurtured well, become an excellent tool in the workplace, especially when they enter leadership positions;

Dr. Chinery-Hesse has had a distinguished International Civil Servant career; the first woman Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), a position with the rank of Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, between 1989 and 1999. Her success, however, has not been on a silver platter since, in those days, several top positions were considered the preserve of men.

Born in Accra, Ghana, she was one of twin girls in a highly educated family. The parents were not permissive, and the children were not overly pampered. Her strong determination and father’s sensitivity to gender assisted her to climb to the top. At the age of four, her twin sister Maud and she were recruited as mascots of the school band. Despite protests from her mother, she became a high jumper at a young age, breaking the taboo at the time that girls should not perform in public in such sports, which were at the time considered fit for only school dropouts. She strongly believes those experiences were what built her confidence in later life to perform in public without stage fright.

Chinery-Hesse has often referred to how thin and fragile she looked at the time she joined the Office of the Planning Commission, an important nerve center for government policy formulation and direction. “As an Assistant Economics Officer, I had to represent the Office at very important meetings with officials from other Ministries, all of whom were men, of course. I had to comport myself and display expertise which forced them to start taking me seriously, and indeed admired my professional skills,” she recalls. “I realized the importance of firm but polite presentation of my case, even in the face of obvious negativity, condescension, and sometimes downright rude behavior from male colleagues, because of sitting at the same table as an equal with them instead of serving them tea,” Chinery-Hesse says of her experience at that early period in her journey.

The Late Nana Afia Kobi Serwaa Ampem II, 13th Queen Mother of the Asante Kingdom

“While the Asante culture is almost unique in its promotion of women leadership in its matrilineal system, where royalty is traced through the maternal side, there are aspects of the system that promote gender inequality. This is apparent in the relationship between chiefs who are always men and have more power than the Queen Mother has. Chiefs therefore should be strategically targeted to promote gender equality.”

The Late Nana Afia Kobi was an offspring of the royal lineage of the Oyoko clan from the Asante Kingdom in Kumasi, Ghana. Her birth took place nine years after the exile of Otumfuo Agyeman Prempeh I to the Seychelles Islands in 1900 by the British, after stopping in Elmina and Sierra Leone. Her parents were Nana Yaa Birago and Oheneba Kwadwo Afodour I, and her birth was heralded by an unusual incident of cocks jumping up and down with outstretched wings and continuous crowing. A blessing from a traditional priest foretold that she would attain unusual longevity. She ascended the throne on February 6, 1977 and was crowned on June 2, 1977. She died in 2016 at age 111, a few months after giving her AWL interview for this book.

Nana Afia Kobi Serwaa Ampem II lived in the Manhyia Palace of Asante. She was an Anglican by faith and the mother of the current Asantehene (king), Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu II, who is the youngest son of her five children. Her predecessor was Nana Amma Serwaa Nyarko II, the 12th Asantehemaa (queen mother). She was the 13th queen mother of the Asante Kingdom and presided over two Asante kings, Otumfour Opoku Ware II and Otumfour Osei Tutu II. Her husband was the late Nana Boakye Dankwa, Brahyiahene of Manhyia Palace, who hailed from Kentinkyirem in the Atwima District of Asante.

Nana Amma Serwaa Nyarko II completed standard seven. During her school days, house helps accompanied her to school. She was the ceremonial head of all the queens in the Asante Kingdom. Born to a royal family, she knew that she could one day become the Asantehemaa, and so she took her family and traditional training seriously. Her adolescent experiences were in the palace of the Asantehemaa and other times the Palace of the King. Her position as Asantehemaa is unique and powerful, and no other culture in Ghana has such a powerful position. As Asantehemaa, she was the only one who could nominate a royal to the kingmakers to be made the King of Asante.

Yvonne Chaka Chaka-Mhinga of South Africa, is fondly known as “Princess of Africa.” An icon of Africa’s performing arts, she is the founder of the Princess of Africa Foundation, her own charity that promotes adult education. She is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Roll-Back Malaria; a board member of companies in South Africa; and a leader in promoting adult education in rural areas across Africa.

Engineer Joanna Maduka is the first registered female engineer in Nigeria and the first President of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering. She is a life Vice President of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI. She established the Association of Professional Women Engineers, APWEN, and Friends of the Environment with the main focus of improving the lives of rural women.

Professor Filomena Steady, originally from Sierra Leone, now living in the diaspora, is a renowned authority in anthropology, gender equality, and the leadership roles of women in Africa. She is chair of African studies at Wellesley College outside Boston, in the state of Massachusetts, USA. Her areas of research include gender systems in a cross-cultural context, social transformation in Africa and the African diaspora, the impact of globalization on women of the south, and women in international development, to name but a few. The publications she has authored or edited include, among others, the award-winning Black Woman Cross-Culturally (1991), Black Women, Globalization and Economic Justice (2002), Woman and Collective Action in Africa (2006), as well as Women and Leadership in West Africa (2012). She has served on advisory boards including the Encyclopaedia of Third World Women, as well as the United Nation’s Steering Committee on Women in Least Developed Countries and Commission on the Anthropology of Women.

Amini Kanjuju, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo but now living in the diaspora, is Chief Executive Officer of the African-American Institute (AAI) and worked as program manager at AAI before her current post. Having migrated to the USA at the age of seventeen, she went into the field of education and training. She worked at Workshop in Business Opportunities (WIBO) for ten years before joining the AAI.