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A groundbreaking initiative designed to provide a sustainable support system for women across the African continent as they navigate their professional journeys and strive for success in the workplace has launched in Kenya.

Ignite Her 4 Africa is a sisterhood of rising African women leaders across all industries dedicated to igniting, empowering, lifting, collaborating, and transforming the African continent. The initiative’s mission is to transcend borders, cultures, and backgrounds to create a better Africa through unity and the empowerment of women.

“African women often juggle multiple roles, such as wife, mother, daughter, and caretaker, while facing significant challenges in health, economic well-being, and cultural and gender stereotyping. The demanding work-life balance in a fast-paced economy poses a formidable challenge, but Ignite Her 4 Africa is here to make a difference by helping women strike a balance,” explained Ignite Her 4 Africa Founder Esther Wangui.

Kenya’s first Female Attorney General(AG), Dorcas Oduor, said during the initiative’s launch in Nairobi that the time has come for women to start working together to lift each other as she reiterated her plans to reform the country’s criminal justice sector to alleviate the suffering of women.

“We are going to come up with an initiative to just re-look at the criminal justice sector because, in the whole chain, it is women who suffer. When we don’t have legal representation, mostly the men commit offences, but it is their wives who suffer at home,” said the AG.

Among critical reforms under the pipeline include decriminalizing petty offences, giving young people a second chance, introducing alternatives to prosecution, that is, diversion, and also options to incarceration, where open prisons will allow people to go about their duties while they are also serving their prison sentences and will also result in review of the whole bail regime.

“We are calling for reforms for everybody because if we reform the criminal justice sector, the woman improves because we are the ones who carry the society,” Explained the AG.

She added, “You can’t do things alone and you cannot succeed alone. You must accept to be assisted where you have a gap because nobody has everything.”

The Law Society of Kenya, President Faith Odhiambo reiterated the urgent need for reforms in the criminal justice sector, citing a rise in femicides in sports, especially athletics, due to a lack of knowledge of women’s rights and legal protection and a lack of a place of minors in Kenyan prisons.

“There is still more work for women in the different sectors. As we ignite, let us take the opportunity to support and raise other women, push for greater transformation, and ensure we make a huge difference,” said Odhiambo.

The Australian High Commissioner to Kenya, Jenny Da Rin affirmed that after four decades, the world is beginning to witness the rise of hard-working, confident, qualified, ethical, professional and intellectual women supporting each other.

The President’s Advisor on Women’s Rights, Hon. Harriette Chiggai, affirmed the urgent need for women to begin creating safe spaces at home and workplaces to ease growing hate within the society, saying her office is running a ‘Safe Home, Safe Spaces’ campaign to bring back the warmth within the society.

The Ignite Her 4 Africa initiative is built on four pillars: Women Industry Circles of Influence Africa, Celebrating Rising Women Leaders in Africa, Ignite Her for Africa, and Inspiring the Next Generation. These pillars aim to unite accomplished women, recognize and honour remarkable African women leaders, provide training sessions, podcasts, and networking events, and bridge the gap between aspiration and achievement through mentorship programs for young girls and women.

“Ignite Her 4 Africa provides a platform for women leaders to share their stories, offering a sisterhood where women can be authentic and vulnerable, and addressing the challenge of building a trustworthy and reliable network across African borders to serve as a sustainable support system for professional women,” said Ignite her 4 Africa co-Founder, Wangui Ngechu.

Elected leaders in Karamoja sub region have resorted to importing their petty fights into the government of Uganda multi-billion project to provide water dams to boost irrigation and livestock, which is beginning to become uncertain.

For example a group of elected leaders led by woman MP Faith Nakut wanted the shared dam at Nakonyen village to be situated in Amudat district and this has caused ugly wars between Nakut’s group and leaders from Moroto district.

Each district of Karamoja is supposed to have a water dam which the president directed to be constructed by the ministry of agriculture and not ministry of water.

Similar wrangling is being replicated in other districts and this has put the lives of agriculture ministry engineers and technocrats concerned with the dams project at risk.

In the case of Moroto-Amudat war, agriculture ministry officials are being dragged into the fight with Nakut’s group turning the heat on them after they failed to get the dam situated in Amudat.

And for the agriculture ministry engineers, the risks are much more. The insecurity of Karamoja sub region is another big problem, because much of the army protection is concentrated on the dam construction sites and this leaves engineers exposed to risk of being killed by armed Karamojongs while in transit as they travel to and from the construction sites.

Such insecurity has actually contributed to the delaying of the dams projects completion because the situation remains unpredictable most of the time though some few objective Karamoja elected leaders appreciate the risk the agricultural ministry engineers are taking.

On his part, the president preferred the ministry of agriculture and not that one of water and environment to do the work because it’s cheaper and technically more suited to deliver such projects because its part of their mandate.

The ministry of agriculture uses the approach of force account whereby its own engineers do the work as opposed to the ministry of water which outsources the work to private contractors.

The ministry of agriculture is spending something like 4bn per dam which is cheaper than the ministry of water which would spend four times more to deliver one water dam per district.

When the force accounting approach is used, the ministry of agriculture engineers do all the work and save money on consultants, supervision and designing. That is how the cost goes down, which the president is very happy about.

Although there are some few who want to personally be approached and given well facilitated assignments to get involved in embracing the projects, most of the elected leaders in Karamoja appreciate the patriotism shown and the risk the ministry of agriculture engineers have continued to take to ensure the dams are delivered at the most affordable rate.

Such leaders have refuted claims that shoddy work was done and their view is that the ministry of agriculture officials deserve to be supported and praised as opposed to making reckless selfish political comments which can discourage and demoralise them.

“All the ordinary people want is water to support agricultural production, irrigation and livestock farming. To ordinary people it doesn’t matter whether the dam is in Moroto or Amudat. It’s all about accessing water to facilitate the intended activities,” said one of the leaders who advised voters to use the forthcoming elections to punish leaders who sabotage government programs in Karamoja.

Since the year 2008, president Museveni has been calling for a comprehensive agriculture mechanisation programme fully coordinated and controlled by the ministry of agriculture which he believes has the technical expertise to be able to work well with agronomists, veterinary officers, fisheries and livestock farmers in districts of the targeted regions.

The president forced the ministry of water out in favor of the ministry of agriculture because he doesn’t want duplication of government work yet some of the elected leaders in Karamoja for their selfish reasons still want the ministry of water to be the one to do the job.