Fadekemi (Kemi) Akinfaderin joined Fòs Feminista as Chief Global Advocacy Officer to lead the organization’s Global Advocacy for Change Unit. Kemi is a feminist thought leader and connector in women’s sexual and reproductive justice movements whose intersectional feminist voice and deep experience in movement building and trust-based grantmaking energize Fòs Feminista’s national, regional, and global advocacy work and partnerships.
Kemi brings more than 20 years of experience working in partnership with women’s rights organizations, funds, and feminist and social justice movements in Africa and globally. Throughout her career, she has been an activist for sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice and has built close relationships with feminist sexual and reproductive health and rights organizations and leaders in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Pacific. She has the drive to “positively disrupt the status quo” and the commitment to elevate the voices of feminist activists globally.
Kemi comes to Fòs Feminista from the Equality Fund, in Canada, where, as the Program Lead for Women’s and Feminist Funds, she created a grantmaking strategy to flow $CAD 14M to feminist funds and movements in the Global South. Kemi also served as a director of the PROSPERA International Network of Women’s Funds, as an African Representative in the Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice Alliance (RESURJ), and as a Board Member of the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC).
She began her career as a sexual and reproductive health and rights activist in her 20’s, when she co-founded Education as a Vaccine (EVA), in Nigeria, to advance adolescent and young people’s rights to health, including sexual and reproductive rights. She was also a technical advisor for the Government of Nigeria at key international meetings for sexual and reproductive health and rights: the United Nations Commissions on Population and Development and the Commissions on the Status of Women.