Marriage is seen as an economic route out of poverty for women in Africa. Without a husband or father figure, many families flounder in the patriarchal culture. Yet, sometimes, they flourish.
Dr. Itai Mafa was just two years old when her father died. When all eyes turned to her mother, Sipiwe Baloyi, the 21-year-old mother of two girls made a choice—a choice that impacted not only the quality of Mafa’s life, but her academic trajectory and research.
“My mom needed to provide for us, so she decided to return to school so she could finish her high school and she then trained to become a teacher,” Mafa said. “Because of that, my sister and I got almost everything that we wanted. And it was then that I began to appreciate the importance of education at a really young age.”
The teacher’s salary, though woefully and comparatively less than in other countries , was enough to send the Mafa sisters to boarding school. Itai found her calling in social work, and by age 29, she had earned her Ph.D. in the field from the University of Fort Hare in South Africa.
Six years later, Mafa became a faculty dean for the Women’s University in Africa. There, she leads four departments, including education, social work, social sciences, and a languages center.
“My path was shaped by my background. This drive I have comes from the understanding that as a woman, things are not going to be given to you. You need to claim your space,” she said. “So earning my Ph.D. and working hard, it was my way of claiming my space, and working towards making an impact. Because if you want to influence anything, you need to be seated in places of authority where decisions are made.”
Women’s University in Africa
Her deanship position at the college was hard-won, too. Many thought Mafa was too young to lead. Senior management, however, had faith in her abilities and experience.
“They said, ‘How can we listen to this child?’ until my first meeting. They saw my composure, my appreciation of the university system, my understanding of functions of committees, research abilities,, and things changed quickly, they started warming up to me,” Mafa said.
The Women’s University in Africa was founded in 2002 to promote gender equity across the continent. Enrollment is about 85% women, a stark contrast to most universities across Zimbabwe and throughout Africa.
The women who established the university, Dr. Fay Chung and Professor Hope Sadza, were in leadership positions and identified the women representation gap. They believe in the ability of higher education to “enable women to fulfil political, economic, social, and leadership roles and not just be confined to domestic roles.” To ensure women’s needs are at the heart of all programming at the university, its charter has reserved certain strategic and senior leadership positions for women.
Bringing her knowledge to Normal
Mafa’s visit to Illinois State offers opportunities for collaborative learning. Not only is she visiting college classrooms across campus, but she will also be giving a presentation on Wednesday, September 25 at 3 p.m. in DeGarmo Hall 551.
“I’ll present on the relevance of education as a strategy for women’s empowerment, using Women’s University in Africa as the case study,” she said.
The presentation will highlight the deliberate measures the University took to safeguard it’s mission and what the outcome has been, after its first 22 years of programming.
A collaborative exchange
Inequities are cross-cutting issues in higher education. While they present differently between Zimbabwe and most U.S. colleges and universities, Mafa offers an important look into the challenges women and institutions face to become effective preparers of citizens for their nations and across the globe.
To that end, Mafa hopes to learn as much as she shares during her trip in Illinois.
“From an academic perspective, and through my role as a dean, there must be an understanding that the world is a global village. We are currently running with the internationalization thrust as Women’s University in Africa, whereby we are saying we need to produce a graduate that is competitive, not just at a national level, but at a global level. One of the most effective strategies to ensure that is to benchmark with other international universities, to appreciate their curriculum content, and to learn delivery models from them. That is why I am so grateful for this opportunity”.
Mafa’s visit was sponsored by SAGE Funding, the Donald Prince Doctoral Speaker Series, and the Department of Educational Administration and Foundations.
