VALERIE LOLOJU
Stacy Dina Owino is an advocate and ally who is passionate about advancing the rights of women and girls. She believes that every space she occupies should contribute to moving the women’s agenda forward while recognising the unique realities and experiences of African women. Her work brings together technology, community engagement, and advocacy to create practical solutions that improve the lives of women and girls.
Driven by a commitment to gender equality, Stacy focuses on ending Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), promoting girls’ education, women’s empowerment, and mental health. She works mainly with young women and girls, equipping them with the knowledge, confidence, and digital skills they need to become problem-solvers within their own communities.
Her journey into advocacy began after witnessing how gender inequality and different forms of violence against women, including FGM, continue to deny women and girls opportunities, safety, and equal rights. Rather than accepting these challenges as normal, she wanted to be part of creating practical solutions that could make a real difference. This inspired her to develop the iCut mobile application, a digital platform designed to support FGM prevention and awareness. Through working closely with girls and young women, she has come to understand that activism is layered and requires resilience, patience, and a willingness to keep showing up even when change feels slow.
Stacy’s work is rooted in mentorship. She describes mentoring young women and girls in technology as her own act of resistance. By introducing them to digital skills and app development, she equips them to create solutions for the challenges affecting their communities while showing them that they, too, belong in technology and innovation.
Over the years, Stacy has mentored more than 300 high school girls in app development and digital skills, helping them become young technology innovators. She has supported nearly 30 women to transition into careers in technology and trained more than 200 women in open-air markets on digital skills that help strengthen and grow their businesses. Beyond community work, she has also advocated for more inclusive policymaking to increase women’s participation in technology at global forums.
What makes Stacy’s approach different is her ability to connect technology, community engagement, and policy advocacy. She believes that technology should not exist separately from the communities it serves. By working closely with women and girls, she ensures that the solutions they develop are practical, culturally relevant, and community-led. At the same time, she works to amplify women’s voices in decision-making spaces so that policies reflect the realities on the ground.
Her work is guided by transparency, community, and philanthropy. She believes meaningful change happens when people work together and remain accountable to the communities they serve.
To Stacy, sisterhood is a community that uplifts, encourages, supports, and also holds one another accountable. She believes women grow stronger when they share knowledge, challenge each other to become better leaders, and celebrate each other’s successes. She sees the Sister to Sister Initiative as an opportunity to build a strong network of women advocates from different backgrounds, bringing together diverse skills, experiences, and expertise to strengthen grassroots movements across communities.
Looking ahead, Stacy envisions communities where women and girls live free from all forms of violence, where every girl has the opportunity to dream without limits, and where those dreams are fully supported. Personally, she hopes to continue growing her knowledge in technology, women’s rights, and sustainability so that she can use those skills to strengthen grassroots activism, expand opportunities for women, and help dismantle systems that continue to disadvantage them.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
The African Women’s Rights Advocates (AWRA) is a dynamic, survivor-led movement founded by African women across the continent and in the diaspora.
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