Address at the opening ceremony of the REFAMP Forum

It was as a historic figure of REFAMP, the Network of African Women Ministers and Parliamentarians, that Juliana Amato Lumumba delivered this Wednesday 20 April her opening address of the annual Forum in Kinshasa. The candidate chaired the Congolese chapter of the Network for six years, between 2018 and 2024.

Three hundred delegates from thirty-six African countries gathered for four days of work dedicated this year to the theme 'Health, Economy and Culture: three levers of African women's leadership'. A theme that directly echoes the sixth project of the candidacy's programme.

In her 30-minute address, Juliana Amato Lumumba developed at length her Traditional Medicine and Ancestral Pharmacopoeia project: a Francophone research programme uniting modern science and ancestral medical knowledge, in a dynamic of pharmaceutical co-industrialisation.

'To heal is also to recognise. To recognise that our grandmothers knew things, and that this knowledge deserves the laboratories and the capital that will give it an industry', the candidate declared. A formula picked up by several pan-African media and particularly applauded in the room.

The Forum continues until 23 April with several working sessions on intra-Francophone health cooperation and training of women leaders in public health.