FEMNET
organization
FEMNET, also called the African Women's Development and Communication Network, is an organization established in 1984 to promote women's development in Africa. FEMNET helps non-government organizations share information and approaches on women's development, equality and other human rights.
Activities
FEMNET was established by Eddah Gachukia, Njoki Wainaina, and Norah Olembo in 1984 to co-ordinate African preparations for the Third World Conference on Women held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985. As part of their role to organize African women to attend the conference, the three women registered FEMNET and drafted its constitution. The inaugural chair was Gachukia, who worked with Olembo, Wainaina, Sara Hlupekile Longwe, Pamela Kola, Mama Koite Doumbia to recruit women to plan the NGO Forum for the conference. The organization is based in Nairobi.
FEMNET has worked with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, the World Conference against Racism and the African Union (AU).
Areas of focus with the AU have included the protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, the Economic, Social and Cultural Council and the New Partnership for African Development.
FEMNET ran its first gender-training workshop in 1990 in Kenya, working with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The workshop helped to train trainers, and FEMNET refined the approach and developed material based on results.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “FEMNET” is organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through FEMNET and organization, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “organization” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5425357. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 1985 and 1990.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “FEMNET” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.