It’s that time of year again. The world’s most powerful leaders will soon be making their way to Davos for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting, where they will spend a week in their mountain conclave discussing the world’s problems.
Those problems are mounting up. The Iran crisis has prompted renewed questions about peace, security and stability in the world’s most volatile region. The bushfires in Australia provide a daily reminder of our failure to respond adequately to the...
ONE
As the world continues to grow digitally, online advocacy is becoming an increasingly essential tool to uplift the voices of everyone fighting inequality.
Rosebell Kagumire is one such voice filling the digital realm. She is a pan-African feminist, writer and award-winning blogger. Her work — published internationally on sites like the Guardian and Quartz — focuses on human rights, peace, conflict and gender equality. In 2008, she was recognized for her work by the Ugandan Investigative Journalism Awards. She was...
Growing up with her grandparents on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, Lisa Michael Jones has witnessed the hardships of Tanzanian farmers. She remembers the time in 2016 when her grandfather invested in a large portion of land to start production of watermelons, just to see the harvest fail and return home empty-handed.
“After that loss, I haven’t seen my grandpa cultivate a large piece of land again. Now he just farms at a small plot close to our house,”...
The start of the year gives us a chance to consider what we want to accomplish in the year ahead. Here at ONE, our ultimate hope is ending extreme poverty and preventable diseases, but there’s a lot we need to achieve this hope. Things like gender equality, access to health services, good education, and investments in agriculture give us the tools we need to achieve our mission. Luckily, there are activists worldwide working to make some of these things...
We’re all familiar with the cliche: children are the future. But it’s repeated over and over for a reason: it is accurate, and critical. The lives and experiences of youth today will be the basis of the future. If we want to create the best possible tomorrow, children need to experience the best possible today.
Wadi Ben-Hirki is a youth activist and philanthropist in Nigeria focused on helping marginalized communities, particularly women and youths, access education and opportunities they are...
The fights against gender inequality and preventable diseases are often considered two separate fights. But these two issues are closely connected, affecting each other in crucial ways. The goals of achieving gender equality and universal access to health services rely on each other.
Dr. Joannie Marlene Bewa is a world-renowned doctor and activist from Benin. She is also a public health researcher at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, focused on adolescents and youth sexual and reproductive...
Twenty years ago, HIV was sweeping the globe largely unchecked and a diagnosis was usually a death sentence.
We’ve come a long way in the fight to end AIDS since then. New HIV infections are down by more than 40% since their peak in 1997. Between this year’s historic Global Fund replenishment and vital medical and technological progress, we can now envision a world without AIDS — something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
But the work isn’t...
The results are in, and the winner of this year’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation is Pelebox! The prestigious award, founded by the Royal Academy of Engineering, is Africa’s biggest prize dedicated to engineering innovation. We looked at the some of the other shortlisted companies earlier in the year, but Pelebox’s improvement to access to medication that stole the show.
Demonstrating a commitment to design and complex technology, Pelebox is a digital platform that manages various internet-enabled smart lockers....
Zanzibar’s teenage girls are often expected to assist with cooking and housekeeping. But 15-year-old Aisha Bakary had a different idea of how to spend her time. As the oldest of nine siblings, she would find spare moments to turn up the volume on the TV or the radio, listening to lounge, house, afro and traditional taarab music. Nearly 10 years later, 24-year-old Aisha has made music her career. “There are no women DJs here in Zanzibar, so I thought...
The fight for gender equality requires action on multiple fronts. It happens in many places, from communities to court rooms, pushed by citizens and politicians alike. But while many democracies already have constitutionally promised equality, the reality faced by women and girls says differently. When this happens, how do we hold governments accountable to the promise of equality?
Melene Rossouw, a lawyer in South Africa, is fighting for gender equality through democratic power and advocacy. Rather than advocating the government...