In this book club gathering, we invited Minna Salami to reflect with us on her latest book, Can Feminism Be African?
Drawing from feminist thought, postcolonial theory, and African knowledge systems, as well as Salami’s decades-long engagement with decolonisation and the lived experiences of women across the continent, the book challenges us to rethink the narratives that make up our world, anchoring them in different ways of knowing. As Akosua Adomako Ampofo noted, post-pandemic Africa has the potential to shape new terms of reference for the future of humanity. Salami’s work invites readers to consider what those terms could look like, through the lens of African feminism.
At the heart of Salami’s approach is what she calls a “becoming intimate” with African feminism. Rather than producing a detached report, she writes to feel the temperature, the visions, and the dreams embedded in the field. Her method challenges Eurocentric frameworks, reflecting critically on “europatriarchal knowledge” while privileging sensuous understanding.
Her writing aims to yield clarity, not as pure rationality but as embodied lucidity: a capacity to see reality in its entirety, where everything is interconnected, where a sentence begun by a human can be completed by the grass and the spiderwebs. In this sense, her book opens a portal to new ways of thinking, being, and engaging with the paradoxes of the world.
The book also challenges conventional notions of political engagement and relationships. Salami proposes replacing allyship with friendship: a practice rooted in choice, presence, and mutual growth. She also introduces the concept of Shakara, a playful yet resolute confidence that encourages African women to embrace their ideas and visions boldly, shedding the default stance of humility often imposed by societal structures.
Can Feminism Be African? is both timely and timeless. It invites readers to grapple with the life-and-death questions of decolonisation, political imagination, and womanhood, while offering tools for personal and collective transformation. As our book club reflected, it is a work that asks us to cultivate intimacy, clarity, courage, friendship, even arrogant Shakara. It encourages us to do this both in the ways we think, and how we show up in the world.
Hosted by Greta Pace Buch and Anaïs Sägesser
Special guest: Minna Salami