The Amandla Institute for Policy and Leadership Advancement (AIPLA), in partnership with the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN-Nigeria) and Womanifesto, will on December 9 host the Beijing+30 Women’s Summit in Abuja as part of activities marking the 2025 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
The national summit, themed “Beijing+30 Women’s Summit. Holding the Line for Women’s Rights: Looking Back and Marching Forward,” will bring together feminist leaders, gender advocates and policy experts to reflect on three decades of progress and persistent gaps since the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
According to the organisers, the gathering aims to strengthen women’s movements in Nigeria by revisiting the landmark achievements of the Beijing Conference, assessing the nation’s trajectory on women’s rights, and charting a forward-looking agenda that links generations of leaders and activists.
To open the event, three prominent African feminists, Co-founder of the Amandla Institute, Erelu Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi; Chair of AWLN-Nigeria, Prof. Funmilayo Para-Mallam; and Womanifesto convener, Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, will deliver welcome remarks and set the context for the day’s deliberations.
This will be followed by goodwill messages from selected dignitaries and two panel sessions focusing on gender-based violence, women’s rights, leadership, and structural inequalities confronting Nigerian women.
Organisers recalled that the 1995 Beijing Conference marked a turning point for women globally, with African delegates highlighting the struggles of women on the continent. They noted that while several African countries have since made significant gains through legal and constitutional reforms, Nigeria continues to lag behind on many key indicators.
Across the continent, women now make up 61.3 per cent of Rwanda’s parliament, currently the highest in the world. Senegal has enacted a 50/50 parity law, Sierra Leone recently passed a 30% affirmative action law, and Uganda maintains constitutionally guaranteed representation for women. In contrast, Nigeria still grapples with low women’s political participation, limited access to resources, and persistent gender-based discrimination.
Although women constitute an estimated sixty to seventy-nine per cent of the rural labour force in Africa, studies show that men are five times more likely to own land, highlighting ongoing structural inequalities.
The organisers said the upcoming summit is designed to strengthen leadership coordination among women’s organisations, deepen advocacy on outstanding commitments, and expand mentorship networks between young and established women leaders.
They maintained that the summit is not only a commemoration but a renewed call to action, emphasising that “what is possible elsewhere becomes achievable in Nigeria when political will aligns with women’s agency.”
