A Nawi Associate is an individual who identifies and is passionate about Nawi’s vision of an Africa where macro level economic policies promote rather than undermine the achievement of women’s rights and gender equality. As such, the relationship between Nawi and its associates transcends transactional boundaries synonymous with consultancies.
A Nawi associate is a feminist believer and doer who is as eager to (co) create knowledge contributing towards a Pan African feminist reimagination of the economy. Nawi associates may be contracted to deliver specific pieces of work for the collective, but this work will be done collaboratively, in a manner that builds the associate and the collective in tandem.
The engagement between the Nawi collective and the associate does not end with the completion of an assignment; the associate remains a constant and invaluable feature in the collective to continuously learn, contribute and share not just their technical expertise but their experiences as a Pan African feminist.
The Nawi associate is an embodiment of sisterhood and is a member of the community that the Nawi collective is building that is working to deconstruct and reconstruct macroeconomic policies, narratives and actions using a pan African feminist lens.
Meet the Collective
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Creative Storyteller and Narrative Weaver
Nebila Abdulmelik is a pan-African feminist storyteller who uses the creative arts to speak her peace and archive stories of daily existence. Born and bred in Addis Ababa, she has since crisscrossed the earth but found her way home again. She is a photographer, poet, writer, and editor. She has vast experience working at regional and global levels engaging Creative Storyteller and Narrative Weaverpolicymakers, leading civil society campaigning and mobilization, initiating and managing campaigns, strategy development, and documentation with a focus on the rights of African women and girls. Nebila has an MA in African Studies, with an emphasis on Gender and Development, as well as a BA in International Development Studies from UCLA. She has worked in academia, with civil society as well as with multilateral institutions. She worked with one of the oldest and largest women's rights organizations in Africa - FEMNET -- as well as with the Department of Political Affairs at the African Union. She is currently a freelance consultant working in the areas of strategy development, documentation, and governance mostly focused on women's rights.
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Pan African Feminist Analyst - Political Economy
Fatimah Kelleher is a Pan-African feminist technical adviser/strategist engaged in feminist advocacy, research, and advice. Fatimah has worked primarily on African transformational trajectories, with a focus on challenging economic and other development orthodoxies in particular.
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Pan African Feminist Learning Consultant
Josephine Njungi, based in Nairobi, Kenya is an action researcher who facilitates and supports participatory action, knowledge generation and learning for organisations, community groups, partnerships for social change. She believes that action learning and research processes support transformative social change across all themes/sectors. As a practitioner and intellectually curious learner, she intentionally and consciously positions herself to learn from peers on the technical aspects of different themes in order to better support, design and adapt monitoring, evaluation and learning processes.
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Pan African Feminist Analyst - Political Economy
Wangari Kinoti is a Pan-Africanist feminist activist currently engaged in global policy advocacy on women’s economic justice and structural gender-based violence. Over the last 16 years, she has campaigned and implemented programmes through civil society and social justice organizations covering women’s political participation, women’s land and natural resource rights, corporate accountability, women’s paid and unpaid labour, and violence against women. She is also currently working with other African feminist activists to document the histories of feminist organizing on the Continent.
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Pan African Feminist Digital Media and Marketing Associate
Yvonne Ndirangu is a feminist digital strategist with a deep understanding and experience working on diverse digital platforms and tools to deliver solutions to meet brand objectives based on consumer insight and data.
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Executive Director
Crystal Simeoni is a Pan-African feminist activist and Director of Nawi – the Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective (The Nawi Collective). She works at the intersection of the technical and the colloquial, of critique and imagination, of knowledge and practice, of language, and of the creation of community. She curates the work of the Nawi collective which, in community with other African feminists and organizations, works on analysing, influencing, and reimagining macro-level economic policies and narratives. Before Nawi, Crystal was head of Advocacy with a focus on Economic Justice at FEMNET, and the Policy Lead for the Tax and the International Financial Architecture pillar at TJN-A before that. She is also currently an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the London School of Economics. In her understanding, in her critique, and her imagining of a different way, her work is always at the service of life.
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Pan African Feminist Creative Storyteller and Narrative Weaver
Agazit Abate writes. She makes up stories and she documents the work of organizations and collectives. The ordinary. The daily. Archive. Fiction and non-fiction. Edit. Collage. Time and space.
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Pan African Feminist Knowledge Weaver and Cultural Researcher
Elizabeth Maina is a cultural practitioner with extensive experience in arts management with a focus on collaboration and sustainability. She believes in creative expression as a means to imagine and create visions of the world we want to inhabit. She is also passionate about sound policy, strategy development, and the implementation of interventions that ensure positive socio-economic transformation.
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Pan African Feminist Designer and Visual Artist
Nzilani Simu is a visual artist born, raised, and based in Nairobi, Kenya. She specialises in illustration, hand lettering, infographics, identity design, and visual advocacy and is passionate about design for social impact; she is also a part-time lecturer in a Nairobi-based digital arts college. She finds inspiration in the African landscape from animals to plants and flowers. She also enjoys learning and conveying African stories in her art. Her hand-lettering practice moves her through music lyrics to inspirational quotes. Her art brand Kulula (IG @_kulula) is an outlet for creative expression where she also sells art goods and holds occasional workshops.