In an interview with Voice of America reporter Moses Garzeawu, former Malawian president Dr. Joyce Banda congratulated Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on the launch of the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development. She hailed the Center and its flagship Amujae Initiative as an important resource for African women, offering them the support that they need to excel in leadership.

In the interview, she noted the leadership role that African women have had in their communities across history and highlighted the efforts needed to advance women’s leadership in the political arena:

“We are leaders. We’ve been leaders before. What we want is to participate in leadership just like we did. And to achieve that, there’s so many steps that we need to take. But one of them, to agree with Ellen Sirleaf in establishing this Center, is to build a critical mass of African women leaders who will, in turn, reach out, mobilize women, form networks, educate the girl child, so that we can have the leaders that we require in order to participate effectively in leadership.”

She continued:

“For me, it’s a moral obligation on our part to do what President Ellen Sirleaf has done in our own different ways. For me, I have chosen the education of the girl child as my path to empowering women. President Sirleaf has gone a step up, to mobilize young women and empower them to be ready to assume positions of leadership.” 

Listen to the interview below.