Women’s empowerment is the core objective of Elle Afrique, a blog site that has a magazine format. It gives a voice to women and recognises their contribution to society.

“I started ElleAfrique in December 2011 out of anger,” said Salha Kaitesi, the founder of the blogzine as she fondly calls it. “I was frustrated at the way women, especially African women, are put down.”

Nellie Vigneron Umutesi, the editor of the blog, was born in Rwanda, raised in Burundi and currently stays in the US.

“I stumbled on ElleAfrique about four years ago after I read one of their features on the most influential women in Africa. I jumped at the chance to be one of their contributors. ElleAfrique is appealing because it is a blogzine by African women for African women. After contributing consistently to the blog for over a year, an editor’s position opened up as Salha was expanding and she offered it to me,” said Nellie.

The blogzine has 30 contributors from Africa and abroad and is also growing its readership using social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
“I would say women make up the majority of our readers aged between 20 and 35,” said Salha.

The management team consists of Salha and Nellie, who deal with the day-to-day administration work; while Femi Adedoyin edits the blogs and Christelle Mekoh is in charge of the social media platforms.

The blog is bilingual and consists of blogposts in French and English.

According to Nellie, they want to have women contributors from every country in Africa.

“I believe that this blog proves that we are more alike than different regardless of where we are in life in terms of geography or status. We all want to be heard and treated with love and dignity,” said Nellie.