The Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists

The Charter emerged from the first African Feminist Forum in Accra and answers a recurring political problem: feminism is often diluted into generic ‘women’s empowerment,’ while organizations reproduce the hierarchies they oppose. It names patriarchy as a system and insists that African feminists may claim the word feminism without apology, whether their struggle concerns sexuality, labor, land, violence, religion, state power, or economic justice.

Its most important move is to connect public demands with organizational ethics. Feminist institutions must examine leadership, money, labor conditions, generational power, conflict, and accountability. A movement cannot credibly challenge domination outside while normalizing secrecy, exploitation, or personality cults inside. The Charter therefore functions less like a doctrinal checklist than a tool for collective self-criticism.

The document also rejects the idea that African feminism is imported, while refusing to romanticize culture as politically innocent. Its continental language inevitably contains tensions across nationality, class, disability, religion, and sexuality, and later movements have expanded what inclusion requires. Its enduring value is that it treats feminism as an explicit, revisable practice of liberation rather than a label granted by institutions or donors.