The African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) is calling on African women from around the world to participate in the 2023 Black Women’s Convention.  This important conference will take place on March 24- 26, 2023 in St. Louis, MO at the Akwaaba Hall in the Uhuru House - the house that black built.  

The theme of our 2023 convention, “Burning this System Down, Lifting our Sisters Up,”  is a confident statement about what we must do to create a world where black women and girls are safe and free. 

ANWO organizes with the knowledge that African people will see true freedom in our lifetime. The freedom we speak of requires a complete overturning of the current social system that was built on the backs of our ancestors and in the wombs of our foremothers. It was their children who made up the forced labor needed to uphold the pedestal upon which colonial capitalism rests.

The foundation of the colonial capitalist mode of production was not the genius of the white men. It was and still is the result of forced labor and exploitation of African and most of the world's people, trapped as colonized subjects.   

The Black Women’s Convention is a challenge to the false social construct that alienates women.  It is a place to develop ideas and share space with other African women who believe a better world is possible.  It is a place to lift up our efforts to solve problems caused by colonialism. It is a space to deepen our challenge to colonialism.

Why is it so important to tap into our power?  

 Every day, African women are either being groomed or damaged by colonial capitalism.

The development of the African petit bourgeoisie and neo-colonial puppets has made it easier for the colonizer to oppress African people in blackface.  Often we find ourselves applauding the wins of African petit-bourgeois women as a win for all black women when in reality it is a win for the colonizers.   These women do not forward the interest of African working-class women instead they help elevate the policies of oppression within the African colony.

There is also a duplicitous effort by colonial capitalists to capture all of our labor power. Data on the health, employment, and socio-economic status of African women are used to develop schemes to further deepen  African women's connection to the capitalist economy.  

You'll see NGOs, the World Bank, World Health Organization, United Nations, and others promising to forward African women's equity and equality when really it is just a way to extend the influence of the colonial powers. 

The Black Women’s Convention will give African women an opportunity to develop and deliver our own plans.  The Convention will feature presentations that focus on health, incarceration, economic development, political development, and active campaigns that are building infrastructure in our own interest.  

We invite all interested black women to learn more about what we are doing to destroy a system that does not work for us. Learn what we can do to rebuild in our own interest.  We are not only lifting up our sisters, but we are lifting up humanity.