Amina J. Mohammed Quotes

In Nigeria, it is quite shocking to see the low levels of women in parliament – both in the Senate and the House. And that we actually have men actively opposing efforts to reduce their capacity. I think here, Nigeria needs to change its strategy and it needs to start on the local level of the parties. Again, I see the great capacity of women in Nigeria to participate, so I don’t think that’s our challenge. Our challenge is the construct and what the male community puts into it.

Those are real stories. They are real situations that have to sometimes find their way into the media, into the headlines. Not so much the misery of it, but the way that we can prevent it and then link that to the 1.5 degrees.

And what the SDGs tell us is: Let’s take a step back and let’s ask people to set the foundations on which we are building sustainable development. Let’s get them right; let’s take the time to do that and not be in a hurry to fail.

The policy somersaults that we are feeling right now, I guess they feel them in the United Kingdom, they feel them in countries in Europe now that are going so far right from being so far left. So, it’s important, and then I think that, the more we educate people, the better constituencies we have for engaging. You can’t engage with one person, one vote, when there is quite frankly, a lack of education as to understanding why the vote, and what’s my vote worth? Is it $5? Or is it educational reform, and health services, and things that are my rights, that’s what my vote is. So it’s a little bit of a journey, as you know, the long road to freedom – the road is still being tracked.

I think he’s given me fodder for my advocacy. Because when I go back into those sterile rooms, that somehow craft language that I don’t understand, and many people don’t understand, we can break it down. And this is where I think the partnership with the media is so important. This is a new partnership that we need to have.

We don’t often look at the fact that root causes can require to be addressed over the long-term. We have to have a balance on what we do in the short term; what can we do in the long-term, and there are some of those low-hanging fruit that give a sense of the possibilities of achieving the longterm objective. But people often want to have things done yesterday.

There are so many. Climate for me is the biggest challenge that we have, and opportunity. So when a farmer says to me that this is not about a flood, or temperatures, it’s about I wake up in the morning and my crop is gone because of a dust storm, and that dust storm has come because of drought, and my farm is gone, my livelihood is gone.

I think both in the global community and in Africa, we have the right rhetoric, we have the correct framework. But it’s when that rubber hits the road that action comes into play. I think in the case of the AU, what we have seen the African leadership do in the last few months is to, first of all, get behind the reforms that are needed and make them happen, and ask and take the tough questions on how to reform an institution to take responsibility for the decisions that happen to get the results, both in terms of the AU’s Agenda 2063 and Silencing the Guns. We have also seen that they made progress in taking responsibility towards financing the AU itself. These are all works in progress at different stages but I believe the leadership right now is incredibly serious about it and we are redefining our relationship with Africa on the basis of respect and solidarity, as the [UN] secretary general says.

For many, the health pandemic has been a tragedy, particularly in developed countries, but for developing countries it has a socio-economic impact that will take so much longer to recover from.

And as such, each thread matters, each thread makes the fabric stronger, not weaker. So the less threads we have, that we leave behind, the weaker that fabric. And I think if you say that to people, then they see themselves in the fabric. It’s not you against us.

I think we must stop stereotyping some of these issues. The truth of the matter is that there is an evolution of society. At one point, you have one breadwinner, at another point you have more than one breadwinner and a different kind of context and environment. How do we empower everyone to have a role and a place in the home, in the workplace and in society? I think if we do that, we will balance the decisions that we take and we will not be shut out of it.

You’re not just looking at capacities and skills to connect to the outside world without understanding anything about who you are, and the part that you play in your own ecosystem.

As human beings, what we look to is what they stood for.

Innovative instruments including blended finance can all play an important role, but we need to massively scale-up that delivery.

And then the livelihoods of all these Maasai women and men that I met, their livelihoods, their cattle have died. You see the carcasses on the road. And we don’t want to talk about that much. But that’s assets that have just been taken away. And so when Kenya is dealing with that, they’re saying, ‘okay, right now, the private sector is coming in, and we’re asking them to put a fund together, so they buy the cattle before they die’. So there are resources for that community, for the hard times, and they can replenish stock. Then we have put things together that will help us to build back with a level of resilience.