Commentaries

From Circumcisers to Entrepreneurs: the Story of Abagusii Women in Kenya

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Published on Thursday, 18 March 2010 02:42

The Abagusii community is a Bantu ethnic group that resides in Western Kenya, approximately 400 kilometres west of Nairobi. The Abagusii is a community rich with culture and traditions among which is the practice of female circumcision. The practice of FGM (female genital mutilation) has been outlawed by a number of legal instruments in Kenya, among them the Children’s Act of 2001 and the Sexual Offences Act of 2006. However, this practice is still rampant in this area. Statistics from the government of Kenya’s situation analysis report in 2007 put the prevalence of FGM among the Abagusii women and girls at 94 percent.

Since the early 1990’s nongovernmental organisations, such as Maendeleo ya Wanawake and Adventist Relief Agency (ADRA), initiated a program targeting circumcisers (often women past their middle age) who heavily depended on carrying out FGM as a cultural rite of passage and also as an income generating activity, since they are paid at least Kenya Shillings 500 (USD 7) per girl circumcised. These programs involved community advocacy and education on the dangers of FGM. At the same time the circumcisers were trained on business management skills and thereafter facilitated to form investment groups of 5 to 10 women, upon which they were given collateral free loans amounting to Kshs 10,000 (USD 142) to initiate small business of selling vegetables, cereals, maize flour, paraffin and fruits in the nearby open markets.

The former circumcisers today are established small scale traders and anti-female genital mutilation activists who are at the fore-front in educating young girls and women on the dangers of FGM. This initiative has resulted in increased family income while at the same time enabling young girls to avoid early marriages, thus having a real chance of making it in careers of their choice for stable and economically independent lives in the future. These women business entrepreneurs are today mentoring many young girls and are seen as role models in their community due to the fact that they were able to break the financial dependency syndrome often witnessed in many rural African households where the father is the income earner and all powerful property-owner. This has further reduced the cases of domestic violence and violence against women previously occasioned by the perceived limited resources at home and the continuous need to satisfy ones family.

These former circumcisers are today members of women business associations who have come together and pooled their resources to supply fruits, sugar cane, pottery and other products from the rural areas to urban centres such as Nairobi, Kisumu, Nakuru and Mombasa. In abandoning FGM, these women have helped to improve individual and community productivity thus reducing the gender based tensions associated with competition for scarce resources and fostering peaceful coexistence among men and women in the community.