Meet Stephanie Kimou, The Founder of PopWorks Africa: On Disrupting International Development & Centering Black Women’s Leadership
Founder and principal consultant of Population Works Africa, Stephanie Kimou.
By Jaimee A. Swift
Ivorian-American women’s rights activist Stephanie Kimou (she/her/hers) was tired of African women being overlooked in the historical and contemporary white spaces of domination in the international development sector. So, she decided to do something about it.
Stephanie Kimou was more than tired of racist and sexist based micro-aggressions and the blatant racism from white leadership in the international development sector in Africa––she was frustrated and angry. She was frustrated and angry that African women were not seen or treated as leaders and socio-political change agents in their communities, while white people in international development who are not from African countries are considered “experts”. She was frustrated and angry that policies, initiatives, and events were supposedly being created for African women but not created by African women and therefore, consistently lacked the perspectives, voices, and opinions of African women. She was frustrated and angry with the constant use of the “African Women Rising” trope by international non-governmental organizations to intentionally shape their fundraising around Black suffering and trauma on the African continent.
Moreover, as an Ivorian-American international development professional and women’s rights activist, Kimou was frustrated and angry that her own expertise and years of experience was overlooked in favor of “white savior” opinions and perspectives on what is “best” for African women.
That is why Kimou created and founded Population Works Africa, a “feminist network of consultants rooted in Blackness, working to elevate African development solutions.” Dedicated to opening up spaces, opportunities, and resources so young Africans can work for the good of their communities, Population Works Africa supports innovative African-led development solutions that are locally rooted. With initiatives such as “Decolonizing Development”, a workshop that addresses privilege, racial stereotypes, and true inclusion in international development, and #BlackWomeninDev, a global network by and for Black women in the development sector, Kimou is challenging the way African and African-descendant women and their leadership are seen, heard, and felt.
Read more about Kimou’s work with Population Works Africa (also known as PopWorks); her thoughts on white supremacy in the international development sector; and what a “Black Woman Radical” means to her.
As an African woman, as an Ivorian woman, how have you seen other African women excluded from leadership positions in the international development sector?
Stephanie Kimou (SK): “I think this is probably the idea of Black female leaders as a position is, like, not real. I’m an Ivorian leader because I’m Ivorian and I work in Francophone Africa, but an overall international development leader I am not, because we get pigeonholed according to our race, and most of the time as an African woman according to your country. And, so, in international development, you get jobs and you get clients really based on this niche expertise that you have — usually attached to where you’re from. While a lot of white women and white men are considered experts in women’s economic empowerment, or malaria, or HIV transmission, or adolescent sexual health. I’m not considered an overarching expert at that level — people come to me for my expertise as an Ivorian woman who works in Francophone Africa.”
“…but just the optics of having white leaders in international development and then Black and Brown people being country-level experts is so fucked up.”
“I think that the idea that Black women aren’t experts in general and white women are experts in general really hinders us from being true leaders in international development, and it really pigeonholes us to speak and work specifically for our race, which is what we do inherently anyway but just the optics of having white leaders in international development and then Black and Brown people being country-level experts is so fucked up. This is how international development work is structured. White people have the money so they make the biggest power moves, and Black people and Brown people are waiting for money to trickle down so we can do field activities.”
Can you discuss white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in global development in and how Pop Works attempts to address white supremacy, primarily in Francophone Africa where PopWorks situates itself?
SK: “Development is very much rooted in white supremacy. It’s the fact that certain entities, certain foundations, certain very rich individuals have the budgets of certain African countries. When you have large international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and foundations coming into a country with hundreds of millions of dollars to invest, they’re going to influence the government, they’re going to influence civil society, and everyone’s going to lean in favor of what those external entities are prioritizing. And so, white supremacy is deeply rooted in international development and in the economic and financial control that white institutions have in African countries.”
“White supremacy is so real in Africa, it’s so real — colonial thinking is so real. It’s so perpetuated within aid structures.”
“White supremacy is very much alive in Francophone Africa because of how much money is being poured into our countries by white people and by white institutions. With money comes religion, with money comes certain ‘truths’ that they want to share and white institutions want Black countries to understand and perpetuate. With Pop Works always trying to be disruptive and amplify and elevate the voices of Black people with Black solutions on the continent, and in the Diaspora, it’s very frustrating to see how under the spell a lot of our countries’ governments are with white institutions. White supremacy is so real in Africa, it’s so real — colonial thinking is so real. It’s so perpetuated within aid structures.”
How have you used Pop Works as a platform, as a blueprint, to resist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and to create safe spaces for, in particular, African women to have their perspectives and strategies seen, felt, and heard?
SK: “PopWorks has a few main pillars that are being operationalized in different ways. The first pillar is “Be Disruptive.” We’re hired a lot by foundations to look at how they’re investing in certain countries and in what ways is it problematic. When our clients hire us, they have to understand: if they’re going to hire Pop Works, we’re going to talk about white privilege, we’re going to talk about the issues that lie with sending people with no experience with Africa to be directors for projects on the continent — we’re unpacking in a very disruptive way what they’ve been doing for the past decades.
“Another pillar of activism is that we want to document Black stories. This is where community building comes into play, especially with “Black Women in Dev”, which is a community of women who are not just coming together to talk about microaggressions and what it means to be Black working for Black people in white spaces, but we’re also getting people hired. There are so many women getting hired into these mostly white spaces to do this work which I think is very much inherently disruptive, because these spaces can become a community of better practices in terms of diversity, inclusion, and belonging in international development. We want to document the stories of Black women who are working on all these different projects from global health, to malaria, to water, and sanitation. We are trying to use Pop Works as a platform to share their stories, to share what they’re doing, and make it known that we’re a very big minority — that’s huge in numbers, but we’re not seen so we’re considered a minority. So, how can we be seen as less of a minority? By getting stories out.”
“Being a Black Woman Radical is disruption. You’re fucking shit up, you’re shaking things up, you’re entering white spaces, and making them Black and then leaving them more accessible for Black women.”
JS: What does being a ‘Black Woman Radical’ mean to you?
SK: “Being a Black Woman Radical is disruption. You’re fucking shit up, you’re shaking things up, you’re entering white spaces, and making them Black and then leaving them more accessible for Black women. And that is what I do with PopWorks ––the radical notion that a Black woman is using her privilege –– because I am privileged: I speak English; I am an American, I am an African-American; I am an educated woman; and I am conscious about certain intersections of our oppression. I am taking all that privilege and entering very white spaces and trying to disrupt them to try and make them more accessible for Black women. So that’s what it means to me, it’s just being a really disruptive Black woman to ensure that you’re making spaces accessible for other women.”
For more information about Population Works Africa, please visit here.
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