D’Banj, Bono And Top African Acts Urge World Leaders To Focus On Women’s Empowerment And Justice In Strong Girl Remix

Late last month ONE released the video for Strong Girl Remix which featured 14 artists around Africa both male and female. D’Banj, Banky W, Diamond Platnumz as well as U2’s Bono added fire power to the allstar female line up which included Omotola, Waje, Yemi Alade, Victoria Kimani, Vanessa Mdee, Selmor Mtukudzi, Arielle T among others.

ONE put together this initiative as an avenue to urge world leaders at the United Nations to focus on women’s empowerment and justice.

The artists are calling on all governments — who are meeting this weekend at the United Nations General Assembly – to place women and girls at the centre of global and national development commitments in 2015. This year the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) come to an end, and from September 25^th the new Global Goals for Sustainable Development will come into force. These new goals will set the agenda for development for a generation, and could see us be “the great generation to end extreme poverty” as Nelson Mandela once said.

There have already been some signs of progress, with the African Union (AU) Heads of State Declaration committing to address the fact that Poverty is Sexist earlier this year. Now this remix has the 14 stars singing in chorus to ask world leaders to do the same – and pledge to tackle the poverty of sexism which affects the entire planet – as they meet at the UN.

Actress Omotola, who supported the original version, the remix and stars in the music video said: “This remix shows Strong Girl is a song to be played on repeat, because the message of lifting up girls and women cannot be played enough and is relevant across the globe. We know that in 18 nations men can legally stop wives working and in 46 there are no laws protecting women from domestic violence. To change this situation it is important to have men and women stand together to call for an end to the violations of women.”

Remixing Strong Girls with female and male artists not only amplifies the song’s powerful message that when you focus on women you help everyone – it shows that men and women must join forces to  ensure that we have  strong girls and women everywhere.

Watch video below.