There are so many women doing groundbreaking work to champion women’s right to health and creating safer spaces for females to live their healthiest and happiest lives. They’re changing the landscape and shaping conversations in every area from SRHR (sexual and reproductive health and rights) policy reform to breaking fitness boundaries.

Ephrasie Coulibaly Kambou

With about 62% of unsafe abortion-related deaths occuring in Africa, women like Kambou are integral in their work on sexual and reproductive health. She is making great strides in Cote d’Ivoire, especially for young girls.

Kambou has headed ‘Réseau des jeunes ambassadeurs pour la santé reproductive et le planning familial’ (‘Youth Ambassadors Network for Reproductive Health and Family Planning’) since 2016. Together with her association members, they aim to provide public health information in communities, especially on prevention of early pregnancy and menstrual hygiene. Furthermore, over the past three years they have organized summer camps, gathering 200 young people who are educated on family planning and sexual and reproductive health.

In 2019, Kambou headed a network of youth activists who were part of a campaign that led the country’s Ministry of Health to issue a directive to offer free family planning services to adolescents aged 15–24 in all school and university health centres, as well as public centres. 

The March 2022 Youth Family Planning Policy Scorecard indicates that several policies have since been reviewed covering topics such as service provider authorization, age restrictions, marital status restrictions, as well as policies that directly affect adolescents' access to a full range of family planning methods.

Cassandra Nuamah 

Ghanaian-born, New York-based Cassandra Nuamah is a master Kukuwa Fitness Trainer and certified wellness coach. 

Kukuwa Fitness curates annual fitness, cultural and community service excursions to different countries in Africa through their company Africa With Us. The Kukuwa Fitness experience is an event where you can expect African Dance, Fitness, Cultural Exploration, and Community Service. 

Nuamah has been active in dance and sports her whole life. She began to take an interest in fitness and nutrition after watching her mother take care of her sister Sam following her diagnosis of the condition Lupus. Through this experience, and witnessing the holistic healing methods of nutrition created by her mother, Nuamah started to change her own lifestyle and became determined to improve her health, and support others.

Transforming her lifestyle helped Nuamah lose 50 pounds and now her mission is to help individuals, groups and organisations live happier and healthier lifestyles.

With over 50K followers on Instagram, Nuamah regularly shares fun and creative dance workouts and hosts fitness events.

She shares on Kukuwa Fitness, “I believe that our health physically, mentality and spiritually is so integral to our overall well being. I am your biggest cheerleader and ‘positive patty’ friend that helps you to see the glass half full instead of half empty. No matter what happens you can do it!”

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Vimbai Jazi

Zimbabwean Vimbai Jazi is a passionate and confident woman aiming to make the world a better place for people living with HIV.

Jazi works with Africaid Zvandiri as a Zvandiri Associate, and as a youth patron representing young people at national, regional and global platforms. 

Jazi pursued this line of work because she knows only too well the challenges of being a teenager living with HIV. She started treatment for HIV at age just 11 and expresses that it was a very challenging time for her because no one really explained to her what living with HIV meant because they thought she was too young to understand. By age 9, she had lost her mother, brother and father. Her mother and brother died of AIDS-related illnesses. 

As an advocate, Jazi supports children and adolescents living with HIV through the provision of HIV adherence counselling and differentiated service delivery aiming to improve retention, reduce virological accumulation of HIV and making sure that adolescents are psychologically and emotionally supported. She offers this support through home visits, in clinic appointments, training, mentorship and the use of social media.

Her vision is to ensure that young people living with HIV receive information that is relevant to their rights, and their health and wellbeing is supported.

Yetnebersh Nigussie 

Yetnebersh Nigussie is an Ethiopian lawyer and disability rights activist. At age five, Nigussie became blind following a meningitis infection.

After attaining early schooling at the Shashemane Catholic School for the blind, she went on to attend Addis Ababa University. Here, she took a number of leadership positions co-founding the university Anti-AIDS movement and founding the Addis Ababa University Female Students’ Association. Nigussie went on to achieve a law degree and a Master’s degree in social work. 

She also co-founded the Ethiopian Centre for Disability and Development (ECDD), which promotes and facilitates disability inclusion in Ethiopian legal and policy framework and in society at large. Under her leadership, ECDD became one of the main driving forces for inclusion and for implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Ethiopia.

In 2017, Nigussie was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "her inspiring work promoting the rights and inclusion of people with disabilities, allowing them to realise their full potential and changing mindsets in our societies".

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Jane Mukami

Kenyan-born Jane Mukami is an award-winning body transformation coach. Mukami started her weight loss journey in 2008 after battling to get into a pair of jeans. She went through a divorce and became an emotional-eater, eating food to suppress her pain and negative emotions.

Following several failed attempts to find the right gym and right fitness instructor, she finally found the right professional through a friend and achieved a total body transformation in six months. This definitive chapter of her life gave her a burning desire to help other women feel the same physical, mental, spiritual and life-changing experience she had encountered. 

Mukami launched janemukami.com in June 2014, officially quit corporate America in April 2018 and committed to empowering women by helping them transform their bodies. In the same year, she was named one of Africa’s Top 100 Women by Okay Africa.

She shares on her website, “Competitive body-building was my next goal and it became my life. I competed for 4 years, discovered my passion for health and fitness and that was when I experienced my becoming... I went hard at the gym, nutrition was 100%, I became a different person – happy, confident, with a healthier mind and body, and a better circle of friends who shared similar goals. I also made more money because I was showing up more confidently and owning my brilliance.”

Mukami boasts over 70K followers on Instagram, regularly sharing inspirational workouts and lifestyle advice.

No matter the industry, we’re grateful to these amazing women who are working hard to create a safer and healthier world for us all to live in.