The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) is a pan-African, feminist and membership-based network based in Nairobi, Kenya with over 800 individual and institutional members across 50 African countries and in the diaspora. FEMNET has been engaging with the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) since 1996, serving as an information hub, mobilizing African women and girls in all their diversity to meaningfully participate, submitting written and oral statements, organizing side events and advocating for a progressive and implementable CSW outcome document. FEMNET envisions a society where African women and girls thrive in dignity and well-being, free from patriarchal and neoliberal oppression and injustices. FEMNET recognizes that the commitment to alter relations of power, structural injustices, and systemic oppression lies at the heart of feminism. FEMNET is therefore committed to pushing towards altering power structures that perpetuate gender inequality by nurturing the African women’s movement to enable women and girls in their diversity to effectively claim, affirm, and use their collective power to end all forms of exclusion, oppression, exploitation, and injustices against them. Visit www.femnet.org for more about FEMNET.

2025 marks three decades since the global adoption of The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA). We are also commemorating nearly a decade after adopting the agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.  The two promises establish a structure for attaining permanent and quantifiable advancement towards gender equality and women’s empowerment, ensuring no one is excluded. The BpfA is a significant declaration that aims to promote women’s rights and gender equality globally. It is largely considered to be the most advanced plan for this objective. Adopted by 189 nations worldwide, the agreement aims to prompt a thorough review or elimination of their existing discriminatory laws and guarantee the realisation of gender equality. The Platform for Action addresses 12 important domains that require attention and remain as pertinent now as they were 29 years ago. They are (1) women and poverty; (2) education and training of women; (3) women and health; (4) violence against women; (5) women and armed conflict; (6) women and the economy; (7) women in positions of power and decision-making; (8) institutional mechanisms; (9) human rights of women; (10) women and media; (11) women and the environment and lastly (12) the girl child.

The Africa Beijing+30 Solidarity Awards nominations are open. The awards are spearheaded by the African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET) to mark the 30th Anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. BPfA.

The awards recognize those who have demonstrated exceptional commitment, leadership, and impact in advancing gender equality and women’s rights across Africa.