Akina Dada wa Africa, or AkiDwA for short, is a national network of migrant women living in Ireland. Akina Dada wa Africa means sisterhood in Swahili. Over two decades, AkiDwA has gained recognition as a leading NGO highlighting the issues faced by migrant women in Ireland.

The organisation promotes the equality of migrant women in Irish society, free of gender and racial stereotyping and applies a holistic approach to integration, promoting a migrant and gender-specific approach to public services, as well as encouraging migrant women’s access to mainstream services and initiatives. AkiDwA employs several strategies to achieve its objectives, outreach, networking, research, policy work and capacity building.

For AkiDwA, the term ‘Migrant Women’ includes not only recent immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, but also migrant workers, students, trafficked and undocumented women. It also includes those who have acquired Irish citizenship but who still consider themselves to be outside the mainstream society in terms of their linguistic, racial or cultural backgrounds, and who therefore still define themselves as Migrants.