What happens when women in sport come together: Reflections from Kigali

"I am not free while any other woman is unfree, even if her shackles are very different from my own," said famous writer Audre Lorde.

There is something powerful that happens when women come together. You feel it in the room. In the stories that are shared. In the honesty with which experiences are spoken about. In the realisation that the challenge you thought you were facing alone is actually being experienced by another woman somewhere else.

I experienced that feeling last week, on 9 September, at the Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda, during the inaugural Women in Sports Business Roundtable.

For the first time since its inception, SportsBiz Africa created a dedicated, targeted platform focused on the commercial and institutional reality of women in sport. The roundtable came out of its partnership with AWISI (African Women in Sports Initiative), a movement focused on connecting, amplifying, and creating tangible opportunities for women across the sports ecosystem.

It brought together women from different corners of the industry, athletes, journalists, administrators, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and sports professionals, and, rather than simply celebrating how far women have come, confronted some of the structural gaps that remain.

What safeguarding looks like beyond a written policy document, where reporting systems systematically fail, and what real accountability must look like when women and girls are exposed to harm.

Women talked about storytelling and visibility, why women's sport can have high participation, raw talent, and incredible narratives, yet still struggle to receive consistent media coverage. They discussed data gaps, access, production infrastructure, and the urgent need to make women's sport easier to track, cover, and commercialise.

Then came the business conversation: investment, physical infrastructure, private-sector participation, innovation, and direct economic empowerment. Can women's sport move from being viewed primarily as a social impact cause to being recognised as a viable, high-yielding engine of Africa's broader sports economy?

There were deeply personal stories shared. There were frustrations. There were experiences that made the entire room pause and reflect on the quiet battles women face in boardrooms, newsrooms, and on the field.

Then we moved directly into solutions, building stronger continent-wide networks, structuring sustainable mentorship, generating reliable data, getting more women into executive decision-making, driving investment into women-led sports ventures, and forcing greater cross-border collaboration across Africa.

We are all reminded that we need more spaces where women can speak honestly, learn from one another, and, most importantly, turn shared experiences into collective policy and action.

I hope AWISI, SportsBiz Africa, and the many women already building in this space will continue creating these platforms, and that more women-led sports initiatives will emerge across Africa.