Nana is joined on Baseline by Kenya‑based Pan‑African feminist Crystal Simeoni, Executive Director of The Nawi Afrifem Collective (Nawi Collective), an African feminist political economy collective.

Crystal breaks down what it means to centre working women, whose lives and labour are often rendered invisible within economic systems. She explains how the Nawi Collective is building an ecosystem that challenges the idea of economics as technical or apolitical, and what it looks like when economic thinking speaks to culture, creativity, and everyday life, in what the Nawi Collective calls the “language of life.”

Crystal unpacks what Pan‑African feminism means in practice, reflecting on African feminists who have long challenged patriarchy, race, class, sexuality, colonialism, and imperialism. She also breaks down the origins and real‑world impacts of economic debt facing African countries, from infrastructure to public programs, and how economic control from colonial powers has rendered African nations effectively still colonised. Crystal shares pre‑colonial economic and decision‑making structures across the continent, and the often‑overlooked role African women played in the Pan‑Africanist movement.

Crystal also reflects on the 2020 protests in Kenya, the ongoing resistance of young people and women, and imagination as a political tool.

“African feminists have been doing the work of political imagination for so long. It is a political tool. That’s the work that we do: putting words to this imagination so people have something to hold onto, and fight for, and fight with.”

Check out the Nawi Afrifem Collective's website and Instagram.