In pictures: A male feminist's view on African women

Photographer, blogger and poet Nana Kofi Acquah uses his travels around Africa to chronicle the lives of women at their most accomplished and at their most vulnerable.


"The love of my grandmother, the lessons she taught me - and for my mother - made me consider myself as a feminist and put myself in a position to strongly push women's issues, any time I can," he said.


When Mr Acquah met Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee she had not yet won the Nobel Peace Prize for her role in ending her country's civil war in 2003. "You could tell that her head was in the right place, she knew what she wanted. She was a very determined woman, and with zero airs," he said.


This school in a remote part of Ivory Coast was donated by a philanthropist. The community had never had a school, so children started going to classes in the morning, teenagers in the afternoon and adults in the evening. "Mothers would even breastfeed there. Nothing could get them out of the classroom."


"I come from a matriarchal society. Women in my part of the world are very strong. They make the key decisions. We say that a child gets the soul of their father, but they belong to the mother," Mr Acquah said.
African women. Photographer: Nana Kofi Acquah


However, according to him, the normal trend in most parts of Africa he has visited is that women are treated by men as second class citizens; they often have no voice and live in cultures that tend to lack support systems for them.



"A cousin once told me that he would never marry a woman who was more educated than he was. That insecurity he expressed as a teenager is the same insecurity I see in a lot of men, even well-educated men. When a man is insecure in front of a powerful, successful woman, I want to know why."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29712786