By: Ollus Ndomu
This week’s AfricaWorld Woman edition features Graça Machel, an African stateswoman whose decades-long professional and public life is rooted in Mozambique’s liberation struggle and international advocacy for women and children’s rights. Ms Machel, a widow of Mozambican president Samora Machel and South African president Nelson Mandela, was born on October 17, 1945 in Mozambique, Gaza Province. Ranked among Africa’s women of dignity, she is a former freedom fighter in Mozambique’s FRELIMO movement and that country’s first Education Minister.
Soon after her tenure in government, Ms Machel produced a ground-breaking United Nations Children’s Fund (UN) report, The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, a comprehensive document that subsequently changed the way the UN and its member states respond to conflict in general. With the international recognition she amassed through her report, Ms Machel has been one among few internationally acclaimed supporters of global health, child welfare, and women’s rights and empowerment.
As a woman of both continental and international repute, she is affiliated and working with several regional and international development bodies to accelerate social transformation. At The Elders, Ms Machel is one of the founding members and notably played a leading role in establishing Girls Not Brides, a girl child’s advocacy movement in Southern Africa. More so, she has membership in UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Development Goals Advocacy Group and sits on the high-level steering group for Every Woman Every Child.
With the wealth of leadership experience attached to her name, she is the chancellor of the University of Cape Town, chancellor of the African Leadership University and the president of SOAS, University of London.
Among the most three recognized non-government organizations she founded is the Graça Machel Trust. Established in 2010, this organization focuses on advocating for women’s economic and financial empowerment, food security and nutrition, education for all, as well as good governance.
With her life wholly dedicated to improving the fate of women and children, inspiring hope, and building a more just and equitable world for us all, Graça Machel remains an admirable female figure in the whole wide world.
