Four young African women entrepreneurs and campaigners shared their inspiring stories of innovation and activism, as Self Help Africa hosted its fifth annual webinar to mark International Women’s Day, this week. This year’s United Nations International Women’s Day Theme is: For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.

On Thursday, March 6th, around 200 people from over 18 countries – from Botswana to Burkina Faso, South Africa to Senegal – attended the online event, and heard the accounts and testimonies of Cork-based Somalian student activist Sumaya Mohammad, Moroccan agri-environmentalist Wissal Ben Moussa, Nigerian new media innovator Nina Mbah, and Ethiopian gender advisor Sara Demissew.

The young panel of speakers sought to energise and inspire women and girls of all ages, as they used their personal stories to tell their audience that commitment, collective action and solidarity could move mountains for women, regardless of age, across the world.

Founder of the Moroccan NGO ‘From Sand to Green,’ Wissal Ben Moussa described the creation of her environmental organisation, and spoke of how the desert environments of North Africa too have huge potential that can and must be harnessed.  She said that women must act in solidarity if they are to break down the barriers, and said that economic and social change would only come if women worked in solidarity to achieve these goals.

Sumaya Mohammad, a first year Law student at Cork University described ‘finding her tribe’ amongst the many women and girls who joined a thousands strong climate march in Cork city, at the tender age of just 12. Within months she was calling out political inaction on climate at the Irish parliament, and since then has been a voice for young people at several global COP summits.

Nina Mbah described how she had used the power of story-telling to move and inspire audiences in her native Nigeria beyond mere awareness, and that the core objectives of her work in different media was to inspire her audiences to activism.

Gender and nutrition advisor Sara Demissew described some of the cultural and social obstacles faced by women in Ethiopia, and described how a ‘Family Life Model’ used by Self Help Africa to advance gender equality objectives had identified that these goals could best be reached by including all members of the family, both male and female, in the dialogue.

You can look back at Self Help Africa’s 2025 International Women’s Day Webinar here.