Angélique Kidjo

Angélique Kidjo supports World Immunization Week

Apr 25th, 2012 2:07 PM UTC
By Wangui Muchiri

As part of World Immunization Week ONE Africa Policy Advisory Board member and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Angélique Kidjo has recorded a short video on why vaccination efforts are so important.

Immunization is one of the most successful and cost-effective health interventions and prevents debilitating illness, disability and death from vaccine-preventable diseases such as diphtheria, hepatitis A and B, measles, mumps, pneumococcal disease, polio, rotavirus diarrhoea, tetanus and yellow fever. But whilst many of us take vaccines for granted, millions of parents around the world are not able to access vaccines for their children, with devastating consequences.

Please share Angélique Kidjo’s video and find out more about World Immunization Week on the ONE Blog.

Technology is educating the future

Feb 15th, 2011 7:30 AM UTC
By Angelique Kidjo

Computer technology today can help us better educate girls in Africa. A birth certificate is the key to enrolling girls in school, and with a computer in villages we can register kids at birth. That can help us also fight child trafficking. Especially in my country, Benin, it’s is a big issue for me. I am working with UNICEF for example so we can get computers into villages and also at the main ports and borders to stop children being taken out of the country, because if a child is not registered he or she does not exist.

Technology can also help girls report any abuses they are encountering and stop the problem of hearsay, which allows teachers and adults to get away from abuses that they commit.

Listen to Angelique Kidjo on the role of technology in girls’ education in Africa

The Internet also allows girls in school to connect with the rest of the world. Where they can chat together and work together. It gives them a window outside of their world and makes them understand the importance of the education that they are having at this time.

With my Batonga foundation every time I meet my girls their dreams for the future always amaze me. And computer technology can help realise them. To the ones who want to become doctors and neurosurgeons, I always ask them “Where do you get all those big names from?” They say they know what they want to do; they know how they want to impact their community, their country and Africa, and to take the lead in the future in a different way. So computer technology will help them connect with other doctors or other children who are studying and open new perspectives to them.

One day one of my girls was telling me that she wants to become a future president of Benin and I said to her “Why do you want to get yourself into politics? Why do you want to be president?” And she looked at me and said “With all due respect to you ma’am, men have been leading our countries for so many years and what good comes out of that for us?” Computer technology empowered the girls to speak out for their own right to report abuses not only done to them, but to their community, and to empower them in a way so that they can see the future of what they are learning and what they are going to become tomorrow.