Building Feminist Worlds: All the Panels and Workshops Happening at the African Feminisms Gathering

The African Feminisms Gathering unites thinkers and creatives to explore justice, power shifts, and collective strategies for change in Africa during a four-day event happening at the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg from 25 to 28 September.

On Friday, 26 September 2025 (Day 2) the institute hosts their Building Feminist Worlds event, and on Saturday, 27 September 2025 (Day 3) they host their Building Feminist Futures event. Both days feature various workshops and panel sessions held in the name of transformation. Here’s what you need to know.

Day 2 Workshops and Panels

This full-day programme explores the processes of transformation within feminist movements, with a focus on movement building and the evolving landscape of digital feminisms.

Through a combination of wellness sessions, collaborative Edit-a-thons, and reflective spaces, participants will engage with critical questions. The day will culminate in a panel discussion featuring diverse voices from across the continent and diaspora, sharing strategies, strengthening solidarities, and imagining the futures we are collectively shaping.

On the programme are the following events:

African Feminisms Gathering Thabang Radebe Goethe-Institut — Image by Thabang Radebe

Wikimedia Edit-a-thon: Reclaiming Knowledge, One Article at a Time

Wikimedia edit-a-thons are community-driven events where anyone can participate in creating, expanding, or improving existing Wikipedia articles or creating new ones. In feminist and decolonial contexts, these edit-a-thons have become powerful tools to challenge knowledge hierarchies, amplify African women’s voices, and make feminist knowledge visible and accessible to wider audiences.

Wikimedia South Africa will be hosting a full day edit-a-thon with a specific focus on introducing newcomers to their ability to contribute to the knowledge available online.

No RSVP needed. Any and all are welcome no matter your level of experience. Everything is set up; you only need to bring your laptop.

Cost: Free

When: Friday, 26 September 2025 from 10am to 4pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

The Gathering: African Feminist Rituals of Healing and Community with The Nest Space

Join The Nest Space and The Goethe-Institut in a sacred gathering that celebrates the wisdom of African feminisms through ritual, healing, and story.

Together, you will weave body, mind, and spirit together into a living tapestry of remembrance and renewal. This offering is both personal and collective, a call to honour the power of African female community rituals, and to reimagine healing as an act of resistance, resilience, and rebirth.

The programme features:

Welcome, Introduction and Gentle Movement
Guided Breathwork Practice
Meditation and African Sound Bath Journey
Storytelling, Guided Journaling and Sharing Circle on African Female Community

Cost: R250pp, book online

When: Friday, 26 September 2025 from 10.30am to 1.30pm
Where: The Nest Space | Inclusive Wellness Center, 23 7th Ave, Parktown North, Randburg

Claiming the Web – Feminist Practices in the Digital Age

This panel explores how African feminists are challenging digital exclusion, algorithmic bias, and colonial tech structures by creating inclusive, self-defined online spaces.

From content creation to cyber-activism, these practices reclaim narrative power and foster cross-border connection and transformation.

Speakers include Nkem Agunwa, Nobantu Modise, Abacar Hiuane Abacar, and Ifrikia Kengué.

Cost: Free

When: Friday, 26 September 2025 from 11am to 1pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

African Feminisms Gathering by Shirin Motala Goethe-Institut — Image by Shirin Motala

Spotlight: Feminist Movement building

Zoom-In with Mariam Mohamed Hussein, a dynamic young feminist activist and co-founder of Hawa Feminist Coalition, Somalia’s first young feminist movement.

At just 23, Mariam has been at the forefront of building feminist solidarity in one of the world’s most complex socio-political contexts.

In this session, she will share her hands-on experiences mobilising over 300 young women to lead change, challenge patriarchal norms, and build a movement that reimagines justice, dignity, and equality for women and girls in Somalia.

Cost: Free

When: Friday, 26 September 2025 from 2pm to 3pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

Building African Feminist Movements: Strategies, Struggles, and Solidarity

This panel brings together influential voices and movements shaping African feminist organizing today.

It explores the solidarities, tensions, and strategies that define the landscape, focusing on how feminist movements are built, sustained, and reimagined. From coalition-building to intergenerational exchange, the conversation centres on the practical and political work of growing transformative, long-lasting feminist futures.

Speakers include Jessica Horn, Françoise Moudouthe (both not attending), Monique Ilboudo and Mariam Mohamed Hussein.

Cost: Free

When: Friday, 26 September 2025 from 3pm to 5pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

Gallery Walkabout

Join a gallery walkabout of the African Feminisms exhibition, Women’s Rights: A Tapestry of Perspectives, a short intimate guided tour exploring diverse visual narratives that reflect the complexities, struggles, and solidarities within African Feminisms.

This walkabout offers space for reflection and conversation, inviting deeper engagement with the artworks and the layered stories they hold.

Cost: Free

When: Friday, 26 September 2025 from 5pm to 5.30pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

Day 3 workshops and panels

This day focuses on feminist futures and economies addressing intersecting crises. Through art, activism, and dialogue, participants explore strategies for building just, resilient, and sustainable movements that respond to social, economic, and ecological challenges.

On the programme are the following events:

Connected Landscapes: Beading as Collective Practice

This interactive workshop explores beading as a matriarchal, intergenerational practice rooted in African traditions of adornment, resistance, and storytelling.

Participants engage in beading as a shared language of healing, memory, and connection, honoring womanhood and ancestral knowledge. Through this collective act, personal and communal narratives are threaded together, weaving new visions of feminist futures.

The workshop is curated and implemented by Duduzile Mathebula and space is limited to 30.

Cost: Free, RSVP via email at [email protected] using the reference “Beading Workshop”

When: Saturday, 27 September 2025 from 10am to 2pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

African Feminist Economies: Rethinking Value, Labor, and Justice

This panel explores how African feminist perspectives are reshaping economic thought and practice. It will examine how feminist economies challenge extractive systems by centering care work, community wealth, and ecological sustainability.

Panelists will discuss strategies for resisting neoliberalism, valuing informal and unpaid labor, and building solidarities across movements. Through lived experiences and transformative visions, this session highlights how African feminists are crafting just, inclusive, and life-affirming economic alternatives.

Speakers include Crystal Simeoni, Dr. Lebohang Pheko (both not attending), and Marie Paule Djegue Okri.

Cost: Free

When: Saturday, 27 September 2025 from 10.30am to 12.30pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

Spotlight: Artist Irene A’mosi

Angolan artist Irene A’mosi’s project titled This Character is a Woman, highlights the lives and struggles of Angola’s zungueiras (informal market women).

Using video, performance, and installation, A’mosi addresses issues like state violence, femicide, and police targeting of these women. Central to the project is a 20-kilogram dress made from used rodilhas (cloth head rings) collected from the women themselves, symbolizing their resilience and resistance.

The work invites reflection on the literal and metaphorical weight these women carry, challenging romanticized views and reclaiming their presence in public memory.

Cost: Free

When: Saturday, 27 September 2025 from 1.30pm to 2.30pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg Gallery, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

Polycrisis and Feminist Responses: Intersections of Resistance and Renewal

In an era of intersecting crises (climate collapse, authoritarianism, economic hardship, and armed conflict), African feminisms are advancing urgent and transformative responses.

This panel explores how feminist movements confront systemic violence and democratic erosion through ecofeminist action, mutual aid, and cross-border solidarity. The invited speakers will share strategies of resistance and renewal grounded in justice, care, and collective power.

Speakers include Adenike Oladosu, Benedicte Bailou, and Marilyn Muthoni Kamuru.

Cost: Free

When: Saturday, 27 September 2025 from 3pm to 5pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

African Feminisms Gathering GSA and One Way Up Production Goethe-Institut — Image courtesy of GSA and One Way Up Production

Nkisu: Reading & Discussion With Actor Spaces

Join this vibrant session where the teenagers of Actor Spaces bring to life Nkisu, a comic series produced by the House of African Feminisms (HoAF), through a live reading and interactive discussion.

Nkisu unfolds the story of a teenage girl navigating life at the African Feminist Academy. This coming-of-age narrative tackles themes such as period poverty, sex education, intersectional feminism, gender norms, and feminist culture,combining uplifting storytelling with meaningful insights into teenage experiences and feminist ideas.

Following the reading, the young performers will lead a discussion, inviting the audience to engage with the comic’s themes, share interpretations, and reflect on how feminist concepts resonate in their own lives.

Open to all, with a particular focus on teenage participants.

Cost: Free

When: Saturday, 27 September 2025 from 3pm to 4.30pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

Gallery Walkabout

This walkabout offers space for reflection and conversation, inviting deeper engagement with the artworks and the layered stories they hold.

Cost: Free

When: Saturday, 27 September 2025 from 5.15pm to 5.45pm
Where: Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, 119 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg

Film Screening

The Bioscope and the Goethe-Institut invite you to a cinematographic evening showcasing films by African female filmmakers. Through powerful visual storytelling, these films explore the lived experiences and challenges of women* across African societies, portraying the deep connection of women* through care and womanhood/community. The films offer unique perspectives and invite reflection and dialogue.

Short film: MINKY by Phumzile Sitole, 2025, South Africa

Feature film: THE BRIDE by Myriam U. Birara, 2023, Ruanda

Cost: Free Entrance, booking via The Bioscope (keep an eye out for the ticket link release)