Giving Compass' Take:

• Kim Harrisberg details the efforts of women's movements in Africa working to end abusive situations and legislative injustice.

• What can we do to help those impacted by increased violence during the coronavirus? How can we work to support movements in Africa for women's rights?

• Read about the importance of investing in women to improve health in Africa.

As a young girl growing up in northern Zimbabwe's mining community of Mashonaland, Beatrice Savadye watched as her friends were forced into child marriages and early motherhood while many became sick with HIV.

Wanting a different life for herself and other girls, Savadye started the Zimbabwean women's movement Roots Africa seven years ago fighting for, among many things, legislation change to better protect women's rights in her region.

Under the lockdown, Savadye is one of a band of female activists in Africa pushing for stronger laws to protect women trapped indoors with abusers from a surge in violence, and also a spike in HIV infections.

While providing training, rescuing women from abusive homes in her own car, sheltering 30 women and their children, and assisting them with antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to prevent full-blown AIDS, Savadye is also pushing for legal changes.

In 2016, Roots Africa helped push for a constitutional court judgment that led to a ban of child marriage in Zimbabwe.

Across the border from Zimbabwe, Roots Africa's efforts are echoed by the South African women's rights charity Ilitha Labantu, that means bringing a sunbeam of hope to the people in a local isiXhosa language.

"Violence against women has been a pandemic for a long time," said the charity's director, Ella Mangisa, 37.

"With all efforts focused on fighting the coronavirus, we cannot forget about HIV, malaria, child marriages, and gender-based violence," said Savadye, who often takes her 3-year-old son to her awareness workshops. "I want him to be an ally to women one day, in a society where men and women can thrive with dignity. Whatever work we do now contributes to that dream."

Read the full article about women's movements in Africa by Kim Harrisberg at Global Citizen.