Africa

Remarks by Janet Nkubana, 2008 Laureate for the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger at the Gala Award Ceremony in New York, New York on October 18, 2008. Janet Nkubana spent her childhood in a refugee camp in Uganda, where she became an expert basket weaver. After the devastating war and genocide, she returned to her native Rwanda, where she organized rural women into a basket weaving cooperative, Gahaya Links. Now, Gahaya Links is nearly 4,000 weavers strong, and the women in the cooperative are earning incomes and pulling themselves and their families out of crippling poverty.

Remarks by Faiza Jama Mohamed, 2008 Laureate of the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger, at the Gala Award Ceremony on October 18, 2008 in New York, New York. Faiza is based in Nairobi, Kenya where she is the Director of the Africa Regional Office of Equality Now. She is a key organizer of Solidarity for African Women's Rights, a pan-African coalition of organizations that successfully campaigned for the adoption of, and is now campaigning for the implementation of, the African Union Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.

Remarks by Jill Lester, President and CEO of The Hunger Project, at the 2008 Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger Gala Award Ceremony in New York, New York on October 18, 2008. The focus of the evening was on the role of civil society leadership in empowering women.

On October 18, Faiza Jama Mohamed and Janet Nkubana were named co-laureates of the 2008 Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger, at a celebratory gala in New York City. These two civil society leaders were chosen as this year's laureates because of their extraordinary contribution to the empowerment of women in Africa.

All members of a thriving and active civil society, the five finalists for the 2008 Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger are working tirelessly and selflessly to provide opportunities to African women. Their work ensures that families are healthier, more children go to school, incomes increase and communities are self-reliant. The exceptional leadership of such women helps bring us closer to realizing the end of hunger and poverty.