‘“I have higher hopes for Africa than most donors”: East African women’s rights activists and the transnational campaign against “female genital mutilation” (FGM)

Efforts to eradicate “female genital mutilation” (FGM) started in the early 20th century and have intensified over the last decades, accumulating in what is now a transnational, multi-million campaign to end FGM (Van Bavel 2020b). Despite the millions of dollars that have been spent on campaigning against FGM, interventions have often been ineffective or even produced unforeseen, harmful consequences (Shell-Duncan et al. 2013; Van Bavel 2020a).

Grassroots activists in Kenya attribute the ineffectiveness of anti-FGM interventions to outsiders’ failure to include communities’ priorities and aspirations. Whereas international development stakeholders and donors often prioritise the eradication of FGM, Maasai women point at the failure of the government to provide access to clean water, education, and healthcare, and at unequal gender relations that prevent them from owning land and other resources. The Kenyan government is eager to direct attention to FGM, deflecting attention from its failure to provide adequate healthcare and education. Similarly, whereas some conservatives in the community have now accepted FGM/C abandonment, they resist more extensive change in gender relations.

This paper is based on long-term ethnographic research among Kenyan Maasai and explores how grassroots activists pursue women’s priorities in a context of competing interests, conservative resistance to gender change, and legacies of failed development interventions. It investigates ways in which activists mobilise anti-FGM resources for much more ambitious agendas. Activist interlocutors criticised the anti-FGM campaign for not being ambitious enough and argued that this lack of ambition reflects colonial stereotypes about an inherently patriarchal and static Africa.