WHAT WE DO

The African National Women’s Organization is a membership organization that is comprised of African women who recognize our responsibility to organize with each other across borders, to address and overturn our special oppression.

ANWO members organize around the pressing local, national and international issues that contribute to the special oppression of African women.

As the only anti-imperialist, anti-colonial revolutionary African women’s organization, ANWO is leading on the everyday issues that impact the lives of African women.

WHO WE ARE

We are not feminists. We are African Internationalists, which means that we understand that the oppression that African women face today is a result of the colonial domination of our entire people.  We believe that patriarchy is a symptom of colonialism and therefore can only be eradicated when we destroy colonialism.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

We desire to see a liberated united socialist Africa where the workers have power and where women are leaders and shapers of society. This must be done through the process of making the African revolution.

We believe that through this work we will bring women into a collective process of solving, not just our immediate problems, but solve problems related to all African women and all African people.

We understand that colonialism, not racism is the primary contradiction that plagues Africa and African people everywhere; and that parasitic capitalism was born out of colonial domination, oppressing and exploiting the peoples of the world.

We believe that organized resistance to colonialism is necessary to destroy this exploitation that causes the special oppression of African women.

We exist to build the revolutionary capacity of African women, with a focus on the poor working class.

We are led by the political theory of African Internationalism, which explains the world and our future in it.

Principles of Unity

PRINCIPLES OF UNITY

The main points that we use to determine our work and form political relationships.

  • Class-based unity: In the class societies in which we live, we come from and take the side of the African poor and working class and other exploited and oppressed sectors; 
  • All African people, no matter where we are located are one people who were forcibly dispersed throughout the world, through the initial European attack on Africa that resulted in false national identities;
  • Women, women-identified and LGBTQ+ persons from the colonized and oppressed and exploited classes are among the worst affected by the crises of imperialism
  • Specific oppressions based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, and religion are rooted in the parasitic capitalist system – that “made Europe wealthy and the rest of the world impoverished.”
  • We are compelled to link ourselves and our struggles to others fighting against colonialism, which is the antithesis of human development and self-sufficiency;  
  • Colonialism reinforces imperialism,  feudalism, slavery, and patriarchy therefore it is necessary to destroy the colonial mode of production; and to end imperialist wars of aggression against the oppressed and colonized peoples of the world;
  • A commitment to end the political and social oppression and economic exploitation of African women;
  • Individuals who join agree to do so under ANWO’s International Executive Committee in order to meet its organizational goals and objectives.