Ruth Meena | |
---|---|
Born | 1946 (age 77–78) Kilimanjaro Region, Tanganyika Territory (now Tanzania) |
Education | Ashira Girls Secondary School Agha Khan High School |
Alma mater | University of Dar-es-Salaam |
Occupation(s) | Activist Professor Writer |
Ruth E. Meena (born 1946) is a Tanzanian feminist activist and political scientist. She was a professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam. [1]
Ruth Meena was born in 1946, and received early education near Moshi, Tanzania. After studying at the Ashira Middle Girls Boardin School, she wanted to continue to higher education. Despite lacking the support of her father, who wanted her to take a teacher training course, she managed to plead her own case to receive local government assistance to attend the H. H. Aga Khan High School in Dar es Salaam, and then proceeded to the University of Dar es Salaam, where she successfully took three degrees. [1]
Meena became professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Slaam, until her retirement. She introduced the first course in gender and politics at the university. In 1991 she became coordinator of the gender unit of the Southern Africa Political Trust (SAPE). In 1995 she founded and became head of the Environmental, Human Rights, and Gender Organization (Envirocare). She has worked with other national women's rights organizations such as the Tanzania Media Women Association, Tanzania Women Lawyers Association, and the Gender Dimensions Task Force. [1] More recently she has been chair of Women Fund Tanzania (WFT), as well as chair of the Coalition of Women and Constitution Tanzania (CWCT).
In 2013 Meena was among women's rights leaders calling for those drafting the amended Constitution of Tanzania to safeguard women's rights more explicitly. [2] Meena welcomed the new constitution as a milestone in dealing with discrimination against women. [3] In 2018 she called for gender inequalities to be addressed at the level of local government. [4] In 2020 she called for a more level playing field, to allow women to compete more equally for leadership positions in Tanzania. [5] Presenting the findings of a WFT review of existing election law in May 2020, she called for political parties to ensure equal participation of women and men, for the media to give coverage to women contestants, and for special seats parliamentarians to be given the same privileges as other MPs. [6] She spoke at the funeral of Benjamin Mkapa, recalling Mkapa's implementation of four of the recommendations of the 1995 Beijing Conference. [7]
Dar es Salaam is the largest city and financial hub of Tanzania. It is also the capital of the Dar es Salaam Region. With a population of over five million people, Dar es Salaam is the largest city in East Africa and the sixth-largest in Africa. Located on the Swahili coast, Dar es Salaam is an important economic center and one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to the south; Zambia to the southwest; and Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in northeastern Tanzania. According to the 2022 national census, Tanzania has a population of nearly 62 million, making it the most populous country located entirely south of the equator.
As it is in other countries, the music in Tanzania is constantly undergoing changes, and varies by location, people, settings and occasion. The five music genres in Tanzania, as defined by BASATA are, ngoma, dansi, kwaya, and taarab, with bongo flava being added in 2001. Singeli has since the mid-2000s been an unofficial music of uswahilini, unplanned communities in Dar es Salaam, and is the newest mainstream genre since 2020.
Benjamin William Mkapa was the third president of Tanzania, in office from 1995 to 2005. He was Chairman of the Revolutionary State Political Party.
Shaaban bin Robert, also known as Shaaban Robert, was a Tanzanian poet, author, and essayist who supported the preservation of Tanzanian verse traditions. Robert is celebrated as one of the greatest Tanzanian Swahili thinkers, intellectuals and writers in East Africa and has been called "poet laureate of Swahili" and is also known as the "Father of Swahili." He is also honoured as the national poet.
Gertrude Ibengwe Mongella is a Tanzanian politician who was the first president of the Pan-African Parliament and was president of the African Union Commission from 2003 to 2008.
Following Tanganyika's independence (1961) and unification with Zanzibar (1964), leading to the formation of the state of Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere emphasised a need to construct a national identity for the citizens of the new country. To achieve this, Nyerere provided what has been regarded by some commentators as one of the most successful cases of ethnic repression and identity transformation in Africa.
Imani Sanga is Professor of Music in the Department of Creative Arts, formerly called Department of Fine and Performing Arts, in the College of Humanities at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He teaches courses in Ethnomusicology, Philosophy of Music, Composition and Choral Music. And he conducts the university choir.
Benjamin Mkapa Stadium also known as Tanzania National Main Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium located in Miburani ward of Temeke District in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It opened in 2007 and was built adjacent to Uhuru Stadium, the former national stadium. It hosts major football matches such as the Tanzanian Premier League and home matches of the Tanzania national football team.
Ebrahim Hussein is a Tanzanian playwright and poet. His first play, Kinjeketile (1969), written in Swahili, and based on the life of Kinjikitile Ngwale, a leader of the Maji Maji Rebellion, is considered "a landmark of Tanzanian theater". The play soon became one of the standard subjects for examinations in the Swahili language in Tanzania and Kenya. By 1981, it had been reprinted six times.
The 2011 CECAFA Cup was an international football competition consisting of East and Central African national teams. It was the 35th edition of the annual CECAFA Cup. The tournament was hosted by Tanzania for the second consecutive year and seventh time overall.
India–Tanzania relations refers to the current and historical relations between India and Tanzania. India has a High Commission in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania has a High Commission in New Delhi, which is also accredited to Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Diplomatic relations are described as close, friendly and cooperative. 15,000 Indians visited Tanzania in 2007. In May 2011, Ex Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh calls for strengthen cooperation with Tanzania. Trade between India and Tanzania amounted to 31 billion dollars in 2009–2010 and India is Tanzania's second-largest investor.
Amandina Lihamba is a Tanzanian academic, actress, playwright and theatre director. She is a professor at the University of Dar es Salaam in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts and has served as its dean, head of department, and university council member. In 1989, she co-founded the national Children Theatre Project and festival. She also founded the girls drama group Tuseme festival with Penina Muhando in 1998.
Elieshi Lema is a Tanzanian writer and publisher, also active in Tanzania's civil society.
Richa Nagar is a scholar, creative writer, educator, and theatre-worker who is Professor of the College in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. Nagar's creative and scholarly work makes multi-lingual and multi-genre contributions to transnational feminism, social geography, critical development studies, and critical ethnography. Her research has encompassed a range of topics including: politics of space, identity and community among communities of South Asian origin in Tanzania; questions of empowerment in relation to grass-roots struggles in the global South, principally with the Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS) in Sitapur District, India; the politics of language and social fracturing in the context of development and neo-liberal globalization; and creative praxis that uses collaboration, co-authorship, and translation to blur the borders between academic, activist, and artistic labor. She has held residential fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford in 2005–2006, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study (JNIAS) at New Delhi in 2011–2012, and at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in 2013. She was named Honorary Professor at the Unit for Humanities at the Rhodes University (UHURU) at Rhodes University in South Africa in 2017, and her work has been translated into several languages including Turkish, Marathi, Italian, German and Mandarin.
Marjorie Mbiliniyi is a scholar, feminist and gender activist. She was born in New York and studied educational sciences before settling in Dar-es-Salaam and became a citizen of Tanzania after married a Tanzanian. She worked at the Department of Education at Dar-es-Salaam university. Mbiliniyi has dedicate herself to collaborate with and organize women to fight against patriarchy and neo-liberalism in Tanzania and beyond. She worked as a lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam where she retired in 2003. After her retirement from academia, she served as the Principal Policy Analyst at the Tanzania Gender Networking Program; later known as TGNP Mtandao from 2004–2014.
Bibi Titi Mohammed was a Tanzanian politician and activist. She was born in June 1926 in Dar es Salaam, at the time the capital of former Tanganyika. She first was considered a freedom fighter and supported the first president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. Bibi Titi Mohammed was a member of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), the party that fought for the independence of Tanzania, and held various ministerial positions. In October 1969, she was sentenced for treason, and, after two years in prison, received a presidential pardon.
The Tanzania Media Women’s Association (TAMWA) - Swahili: Chama cha Wanahabari Wanawake Tanzania (CHAWAHATA) - is a nonprofit non-governmental organization focused on women's rights and children's rights, based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and they also keep an office in Zanzibar.
Poland–Tanzania relations are the diplomatic relations between the Republic of Poland and the United Republic of Tanzania. Both nations are members of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.
Leila Sheikh or Sheikh-Hashim was a Tanzanian journalist, women's rights activist and blogger. She was a founder member of Tanzania Media Women's Association (TAMWA) and became TAMWA's Executive Director in 1996.