Rainatou Sow

Rainatou Sow is an advocate for a peaceful and equitable world. She is a woman from Guinea who works to empower women and girls. Rai is a human rights and social justice advocate and women’s rights activist. When talking to women 4 Africa, she said that her aim is giving African women and girls the power of voice in order to create a society where women and men can sit in the same table in both political and social setups to discuss on the way forward.) . Rainatou’s inspiration started way back when she was only 12 years old. She took the responsibility to take part in community development and participated in many community projects and later on focused her attention in empowering women. She is working towards empowerment of women as a way of moving forward as Africans.)

Rainatou is the founder and the executive director of Make Every Woman Count. This is a team of young women in Africa, America and Europe who use their passion and experience to promote rights and empowerment of women and gilrs. She was motivated by her vision that one day all women will have voice in governance institutions and fully participate equally in public dialogue and decision making. Although many organizations work to empower women, she said in her interview with Women 4 Africa that this was not enough as many of them do not focus on giving women the power to voice what they want to say. Her life was the one of an ordinary young girl; the only difference was that she was always involved in doing some community work. From teaching evening classes to young girls in her neighbourhood after school to representing her school, joining the Guinean children parliament where she used to be the Minister of children and women affairs and then working with UNICEF at a very young age to promote children’s education with a focus on girl child, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), HIV/AIDS through door to door and radio/TV awareness campaign. She always wanted to make a difference, and I took every opportunity to do so.

In September 2009, while demonstrating against the regime in Guinea, women were raped and sexually abused in the capital – Conakry. There was a young woman who was at her 3rd year at the University among the victims, she was raped and sexually abused. When she saw a picture of her being dragged half naked by two soldiers, she said that she couldn’t sleep for nights. At that point, she decided that she couldn’t keep going on with her life knowing what has just happened without taking actions. This inspired her to start girl and women advocacy to ensure that African women and girls have a real voice in all governance institutions, from the judiciary to the civil service, as well as in the private sector and civil society, so that they can fully participate equally with men in public dialogue and decisions-making and be able to influence the decisions that will determine the future of their families, communities and countries.

Rainatou hold a Master's degree in international Relations and in Law. She has worked with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), World Health Organisation, UNICEF, and she has also worked at the WILPF Peacewomen Project on UNSCR 1325/1820 in New York. Rainatou was awarded the most inspirational women of the year 2012 by Women for Africa and also recognized the top 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa by Forbes Magazine.

Apart from that, She was also recognized by THE BUZZ in the Equality for all among the Eight Foreign Women's Equality Activist To Know