The Pioneer
Felicite Rwema
Across Rwanda, Felicite Rwema is known by many as “the woman who does football.” At 53, the mother of four is much more than a leader of woman’s soccer. She’s famous for breaking an important sports barrier for girls and uses soccer to empower girls and to heal and unify her fractured country. She’s also been a nurse and successful business owner, and helped pioneer a women’s HIV study in Rwanda— the first of its kind in Africa—with women survivors of genocide and rape—“her sisters.” Born in Uganda, she married in 1980 to a husband who was a soldier in the Defense Forces, and often away. A go-getter, she opened a restaurant to supplement her nurse’s salary and pay her children’s education, and later, the first beauty salon in post-genocide Rwanda. But a childhood dream pulled at her. Sitting beside her mother for an interview, with two cell phones close at hand, she recalls her extraordinary-ordinary life.
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“I used to like sports because my father was a footballer,” she said. “When I was young I used to escort him to go play football, but I was told never to touch the ball, being a girl. In Uganda there were some girls who had female teams—for them it was fine. Because I was older, my generation did not accept [for me] to join them. But I used to follow them.” Returning to a shattered Rwanda in 1994, she searched for how to help. The answer: soccer. “I tried to look for others and tell them we needed
to start girls’ football. They said, ‘No, in our culture, there is no girl who can raise up her leg and go to play football. They are supposed to dance and sing.’ I said, ‘Why not? In other countries women can participate.’” Two years later, she had created a team of 30 girls and hired a male coach. She later asked the all-male Football Commission for help to go national. “I said, ‘I’m going to take the teams to each province...to talk about empowering women through sports [and] as a way to talk about unity and reconciliation.” Soon, others were won over. “They would say, ‘This is incredible!’ Everyone would come to watch, even old men, old women. Then they could talk about the issues of the genocide—why it happened and how it should be stopped.” A NIKE representative took notice: She won a grant to build a national women’s team and launched the Association of Kigali Women Footballers. Then in 2001, she took a three-year break to work with RWISA, a breakthrough women’s HIV research study that used her prior medical skills. Felicite is excited by the Rwanda emerging for her daughters. “Women did not have 100% rights before,” she said. “Even when you looked at sports, it wasn’t acceptable for women to play. But as you read the news and watch TV, you see that women are capable of campaigning for the presidency. There is a very big change.” But there are still social barriers to overcome. “There is still that small cultural thought that if your girl is home, your boy should not wash plates,” she admitted. “It hasn’t gone away 100%.” But for women and girls now, she says: “The selfconfidence, that self-esteem is now there where it wasn’t before.” As a role model, Felicite hopes to inspire future generations of girls: “I would advise them to participate in every aspect of life. We believe that if you have educated a woman, you have educated a nation. So they need to know they are great in society.” ●
The self-confidence, the self-esteem is now there where it wasn’t before.