Women Eyes of Africa

Roseline Ujah, 49, sits on her bed in Umuida, Nigeria, Friday, Feb. 11, 2022. Ujah's husband Godwin fell severely ill with a fever and cough. Everyone assumed at first that the palm wine tapper had contracted malaria, but then he failed to improve on medications for that disease. Doctors at a local hospital diagnosed him with COVID-19, though there were no tests available locally to confirm their suspicion. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

For widows in Africa, COVID-19 stole husbands, homes, future

UMUIDA, Nigeria (AP) — As Anayo Mbah went into labor with her sixth child, her husband battled COVID-19 in another hospital across town.

Vekile Sesha waits in line outside a garment factory in Maseru, Lesotho Monday, Feb. 28, 2022. Sesha lost her job when the coronavirus pandemic hit the world two years ago and the global fashion industry crumple. when, faced with collapsing demand, brands canceled orders worth billions of dollars and few felt the effects so harshly as the tens of millions of workers, most of them women, who stitched the world's clothes. (AP Photo/Neo Ntsoma)

Women of Lesotho’s garment industry lose jobs, hope in COVID

Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the first woman to lead the the World Health Organization's regional Africa office, sits in her office in Brazzaville, Congo, Tuesday Feb. 8, 2022. As WHO Africa chief, Moeti initiates emergency responses to health crises in 47 of the continent’s 54 countries and recommends health policies. Moeti is facing her toughest challenge: helping Africa respond to the coronavirus pandemic and urging better consideration of its people, especially women. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

WHO Africa’s 1st woman leader helps continent fight COVID

Safia Ibrahim demonstrates for the camera the tools and techniques she uses to perform female genital mutilation (FGM), which she learned at the age of 15 and has been practising for 35 years, as her neighbours daughter looks on in the courtyard of her home in Hargeisa, Somaliland, a semi-autonomous breakaway region of Somalia, on Feb. 7, 2022. Officials and health workers say cases of female genital mutilation increased during the pandemic in parts of Africa and particularly in Somaliland where 98 percent of girls aged 5 to 11 undergo the procedure. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

In Somaliland, COVID brings ‘cutters’ door to door for girls

Virginia Mavhunga, a 13-year-old teenage mother, hold her child at her home in Murehwa, 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Zimbabwe's capital Harare, Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021. Virginia dropped out of school after falling pregnant and becoming the subject of gossip and consternation in a community yet to adjust to the sight of a pregnant girl in school uniform. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

With more girls pregnant, Zimbabwe pushes a return to school

Mariama Sawadogo, 44, arrives at her works as a radio host at Zama Radio, in Kaya, Burkina Faso, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. Many guests and listeners in Burkina Faso call her "aunty" as she gently guides them to the right answers and awards prizes such as soap and washing buckets. In the West African country of Burkina Faso, many feel the government has let them down during the pandemic. Tests, vaccines and messaging often miss many residents, despite a $200 million budget for virus-response efforts. In a region where women are responsible for family work and community relationships, they’ve stepped up to fill in gaps. (AP Photo/Sophie Garcia)

Women step up, fill the gaps in Burkina Faso’s virus fight

KAYA, Burkina Faso (AP) — Mariama Sawadogo sits in a small studio, translating notes from French to the local language of Moore and scribbling talking points in the margins.

Rose Jatta pulls her boat into the estuary waters as she looks for fish traps she had set up earlier in the mangrove of the Gambia river in Serrekunda, Gambia, Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021. As health officials in Gambia and across Africa urge women to be vaccinated, they've confronted hesitancy among those of childbearing age. Although data on gender breakdown of vaccine distribution are lacking globally, experts see a growing number of women in Africa's poorest countries consistently missing out on vaccines. Jatta fears the vaccine against COVID-19 could make her ill, leaving her two children without food on the dinner table. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Women left behind: Gender gap emerges in Africa’s vaccines

SARE GIBEL, Gambia (AP) — The health outreach workers who drove past Lama Mballow’s village with a megaphone handed out T-shirts emblazoned with the words: “I GOT MY COVID-19 VACCINE!”

This four pictures combo shows, from left, Lama Mballow, Anta Sambou, Lucy Jarju and Fatou Janha Mboob, photographed in Serrekunda and Bansang, Gambia. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Gambian women’s voices on COVID-19 vaccines: “We are afraid”

SERREKUNDA, Gambia (AP) — Oyster harvesting in Gambia is considered women’s work. It’s a grueling task — they paddle rickety boats, then get into water up to their necks to lay nets.

Guinean wrestler Fatoumata Yarie Camara poses for a portrait at the end of her morning training session at the Ostia's Olympic training center, near Rome, Monday, July 5, 2021. A West African wrestler's dream of competing in the Olympics has come down to a plane ticket. Fatoumata Yarie Camara is the only Guinean athlete to qualify for these Games. She was ready for Tokyo, but confusion over travel reigned for weeks. The 25-year-old and her family can't afford it. Guinean officials promised a ticket, but at the last minute announced a withdrawal from the Olympics over COVID-19 concerns. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Denied ticket over COVID, Guinean Olympian clings to dream

CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — Fatoumata Yarie Camara is used to being thrown to the ground and getting up again, getting back into the fight.

Paska Itwari Beda, the young mother of five children, is on the phone at her Juba, South Sudan home, Wednesday, May 26, 2021. Even before the pandemic hit, South Sudanese women were accustomed to building lives on the edge of uncertainty. But COVID-19 is shaking that fragile foundation. The country is just a decade old and one of the world's most difficult places to raise children. (AP Photo/Adrienne Surprenant)

For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleanin

A woman in labour, walks to her delivery bed at Malawi Government's Mauwa Health Centre labour ward in Chiradzulu, southern Malawi, Sunday, May 23, 2021 . Health officials in Malawi say fewer women are getting prenatal care amid the COVID-19 pandemic. At risk are the developing country's gains on its poor rate of maternal deaths. (AP Photo/Thoko Chikondi)

Fearing COVID, struggling Malawian women forgo prenatal care

BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) — Prenatal services at the health clinic were free, but the motorcycle taxi fare cost more than Monica Maxwell could afford.

Ndeye Yacine Dieng drops embers over peanut shells covering fish as she walks amidst the smoke on Bargny beach, some 35 kilometers (22 miles) east of Dakar, Senegal, Wednesday April 21, 2021. Since her birth on Senegal's coast, the ocean has always given Ndeye Yacine Dieng life. Her grandfather was a fisherman, and her grandmother and mother processed fish. Like generations of women, she helps support her family in the small community of Bargny by drying, smoking, salting and fermenting the catch brought home by male villagers. They were baptized by fish, these women say. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Hit by COVID, Senegal’s women find renewed hope in fishing

BARGNY, Senegal (AP) — Since her birth on Senegal’s coast, the ocean has always given Ndeye Yacine Dieng life.