Ogunrotimi: Expanding frontiers of women empowerment

The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of women doing incredible work in Policy influencing and advocacy, Gender-based violence programming and community organizing. We will spotlight just one Nigerian female personality because this article simply won’t provide enough space to honor each and every one.

Our beam will be on strong and resilient woman, who defied all odds and continues to shatter the glass ceiling inspite the entrenched patriarchy.

Omowumi Ogunrotimi is part of the women rights movement, expanding the frontiers of women empowerment and gender justice.

In Nigeria, Ogunrotimi’s innovative strides in addressing systemic issues that limit the capabilities of women and the profundity of her interventions have earned her international accolades within and outside the shores of the country.

She founded Gender Mobile Initiative, an organization leveraging technology to advance gender equality and end every form of discrimination against women and girls. In the year 2020, she was appointed the Deputy Head of the Sectoral Committee on Women and Gender, AU-ECOSOCC Nigeria.

She has worked in over 50 rural communities implementing proven SGBV prevention models and advocating for safe spaces for vulnerable populations particularly girls and women.

This cluster of initiatives has benefited over One Hundred Thousand (100,000) women and girls. She bagged the Ekiti Future Award for the person of the year 2021.

Her most recent and profound work is focused on driving system-wide changes in preventing gender-based violence in environments of learning.

In April 2021, the first feature-rich mobile application for tertiary education institutions was launched by Gender Mobile Initiative and this being implemented in partnership with over One Hundred Tertiary Education Institutions across Nigeria.

In 2021, This innovation was announced by the African Union as one of its top 50 innovations under its Innovating Education Award She also sits on the Ekiti State Gender-based violence management committee chaired by Her Excellency, Erelu Bisi Fayemi.

All these culminated in being the only West African recipient of the Commonwealth youth award of excellence in development work during CHOGM in UK, She is a 2019 Goalkeepers Nominee by the Gates Foundation, Newyork, A Winner of the 2018 Spindle Public Innovation award in the Hague, A 2019 World Justice Challenge Honoree in the Netherlands, In 2018, she was named by JCI as one of the Ten outstanding young persons of Nigeria.

She is a 2018 Yher Accelerator winner, South Africa, A 2017 Mandela Washington Fellowship Alumni award recipient, A 2017 top ten gender justice activist by IJR, South Africa. She is a 2020 Leap Africa Social Innovators Program Fellow and a 2022 Civic Hive Fellow. In 2020, she was announced one of the winners of the 1000 Entrepreneurship Challenge Africa-Europe Summit by the French Government.

In 2021, she received an outstanding personality award on gender advocacy by the Ekiti State Government. She is also a 2022 echoing Green Finalist.