Years later, after college and a move across continents, she finally allowed herself to pursue music fully. She had always been someone who prepared for the worst, someone who tried to anticipate every possible outcome, but music required a different kind of openness.

“I finally admitted to myself that it was okay for me to pursue music,” she said. “It truly was the only thing I really wanted to pursue with my entire being. I allowed myself to do that, and it was a fantastic decision. And I am very much aware that it’s a very long road, but it’s one that I want to be on.” She began recording from her apartment in Madrid, learning how to build songs from the emotions she carried.

Her writing often begins in moments of reflection. She describes herself as someone who lives with anxiety, especially around love, and many of her songs grow out of that tension. “When I’m going through the motions of love, that’s when songs pour out of me,” she said. “And one of the taglines I’ve kind of stuck to is ‘I make music that will make you cry and learn to love yourself,’ because that’s certainly how I have gone through emotions with my own music.”

The idea behind her album Garden came from trying to create a space where she could feel steady, even when life felt unpredictable. “I cannot control all of the things that will happen to me,” she said. The album became a way of shaping a safe place around that truth.

Two songs on the album almost never made it. She doubted her voice, her writing, and whether they belonged. “I am my worst critic,” she said. She considered removing them entirely, but she released them anyway. Listeners later told her those same songs were among their favourites, a reminder that the creative process often moves ahead of the artist’s confidence.

Her growth has been gradual. She recently shared data showing her annual Spotify listeners rising from 800 to 167,000 in just over three years. The surge surprised her, but she tries to keep her attention on the work rather than the numbers. “It feels good,” she admits, “but I’m still trying to focus on making good art.”

It is, however, Riah’s Cape Verdean heritage that has remained central to her identity.

Cape Verde’s musical tradition is rich, shaped by genres like morna and carried by artists such as Cesária Évora, Mayra Andrade and June Freedom.

For generations, this tiny archipelago off West Africa’s coast has cradled a music that mends the heart’s quiet fractures, from Cesária Évora’s velvet laments to the unsung melodies of fishermen and families holding fast against the ocean’s pull.

Riah grew up listening to that sound, and she hopes to contribute to its visibility.

“Our music deserves to be listened to,” she said. Many people she meets have never heard of Cape Verde, and she wants her work to change that, even in small ways. “We are a very, very small country, and I’m very happy and proud that both of my parents come from there. And I feel like, when I go there, there’s a very big part of home that kind of kicks into place… Just getting our name out there would be fantastic,” she said.

She spent ten weeks on the islands last year, staying with her grandmother and meeting local musicians. Many face visa barriers that limit their ability to perform abroad. She hopes to bring them onto international stages as her own career grows. “I would love to be the reason they can fly somewhere else and perform their beautiful work,” she said.

Her path has been independent. She has spoken with labels and companies, including some she never expected would reach out, but the offers rarely aligned with what she needed. “Lots of times they can’t do too much for artists that we’re not already doing for ourselves,” she said.

Some deals required giving up too much for too little. She decided to continue with her small team, keeping control of her work while acknowledging the challenges. “The biggest place where I would love help is in management and PR,” she said. “There’s so much work behind the scenes, especially in the release of this album (Garden).”

She is now based in Boston and focused on performing more. She has played at shows in Madrid and Cape Verde, and she wants to build her stage experience gradually. She prefers intimate spaces where she can see the audience and feel their reactions. “I want to be in their faces, in their spaces,” she said. “Getting the music directly into their ears.” She is also learning to use social media more intentionally, posting consistently and experimenting with content. “I threw myself in the deep end,” she said. “I’m glad I did.”

Her goals are long‑term. She is not chasing a sudden breakthrough. She prefers slow growth, steady listeners, and songs that find their audience over time. Her track “Too Fast” is an example. It had been out for a while before it suddenly climbed to hundreds of thousands of views. She checked YouTube one morning and saw the numbers rising. It kept growing over the next two months, a reminder that music often finds its moment quietly.

For Riah, music is not something she adopted later in life but the way she experiences the world. She taps rhythms without thinking, hums melodies while concentrating, and writes lyrics in the middle of ordinary days. “It was always a part of who I am,” she said. The realisation was not that she loved music, but that she needed to share it. “I won’t feel complete unless I bring my own music to the world.”

Her work now carries the quiet soul of Cape Verde, the emotional honesty of her writing, and the patience of someone building a career one step at a time. She is shaping a sound that reflects where she comes from and where she hopes to go, and she is doing it with the same steady rhythm that has guided her since childhood.

Second Eye Africa 

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It is a simple memory, but it explains much of what came after. Reading led to writing, and writing became a way of observing people and the worlds they carried. Years later, that early habit would shape a career that now spans communications, cultural organising, and women’s development work across several African countries.

Today, Ozougwu is a communications professional and the founder of Lady Dynamique Network, a women‑led organisation she established in 2022. The group supports creative work, advocacy, and community projects, and has grown into a network of more than 500 women. She recently completed an MA in Media and Communication Industries at the University of East London, a degree that aligns closely with the work she has been building for years.

She describes her professional life in three parts: “Communication, development and partnerships.” Those areas, she said, “show up in everything I do,” and they now form the backbone of Lady Dynamique Network’s programmes.

Ozougwu grew up in Nigeria, where books were her earliest companions. She wrote stories throughout her childhood and continued into adulthood. The practice sharpened her attention to detail and deepened her interest in people’s lived experiences. When she eventually began working in communications and organising events, the transition felt natural. She was still telling stories—only now they were tied to real communities and real needs.

Her latest project, a poetry anthology featuring more than 50 submissions from women across Africa, is an extension of that early instinct. The anthology, titled Lady Dynamique, is expected later this year. It is part of the organisation’s broader effort to create platforms where women can express themselves creatively and be taken seriously as contributors to cultural life.

“I like to call myself a cultural architect,” she said with a laugh. “Because there’s just a lot of things around me… a lot of you know.” The phrase is her way of acknowledging that her work does not fit neatly into one category. Communications, development, partnerships—she treats them as interconnected tools rather than separate professions.

From the beginning, she wanted Lady Dynamique Network to do more than collect stories. “I didn’t want it to be like, okay, you’re just writing stories,” she said. “What comes after the stories? How are you impacting the people that you’ve told their stories?”

Those questions became the organisation’s compass. The goal was not only to document women’s experiences but to create opportunities around them.

One of the earliest examples was the Creative Exchange Program (CEP), a 12‑day initiative that brought together women from eight African countries. The programme covered design thinking, creative entrepreneurship, and digital storytelling. It included virtual sessions and a daily journal‑style workbook that Ozougwu designed herself. Participants used it to reflect, complete assignments, and develop their stories.

The programme also offered a $100 digital‑story prize. The amount was small, but the effect was significant. Women shared stories of resilience, loss, and survival. Some asked to remain anonymous. Others spoke openly about experiences they had never voiced publicly. “We’re not looking at stories of people who are already there,” she said. “We want to give the average woman a voice.”

As the programmes expanded, so did the community. Lady Dynamique Network now includes more than 500 women who share resources, collaborate on projects, and support one another’s work. Membership is free, and most activities are funded internally or through small grants.

In 2023, the organisation moved into environmental work. With support from the African Human Rights Foundation, Ozougwu led a waste‑management project in Borno State in north‑eastern Nigeria. The region has limited recycling infrastructure, so the team trained women in waste sorting and connected them with collectors and recycling companies outside the area.

“There are no recycling plants there,” she said. “So we connected them with people who could collect their waste.”

The project combined environmental education with income‑generating opportunities and was later documented in a report shared with partners.

Ozougwu often returns to a belief that guides much of her work: progress spreads through connection. “If we hold one woman, the other woman can hold the other woman,” she said. It is a simple idea, but it shapes how she designs programmes and how she thinks about community.

She frequently cites Access Bank’s W Collective in Nigeria as an example of what institutional support for women can look like. “I’m very proud of how they built that community,” she said. She is studying how such structures emerge and how organisations can transition from corporate spaces into development work.

Her own path has not followed a straight line. She has moved between writing, corporate communication, organising, and academic study. The master’s programme in London strengthened her understanding of media industries and sharpened her research and project‑management skills. But it did not shift her priorities.

“If I’m going to tell a woman’s story,” she said, “there is something around it that is going to either change this person’s life.”

Lady Dynamique Network is preparing to release its poetry anthology later this year. More programmes are planned, and Ozougwu is seeking partnerships and funding to expand the organisation’s reach. The goal is not scale for its own sake, but access—more women, more stories, more opportunities.

She is still the child who wrote stories, but the stories now belong to many women, not just one. And the structures she is building—small, steady, and deliberate—are designed to last.

Second Eye Africa

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The fund is managed by ICONIQ Impact, the philanthropy arm of ICONIQ Capital, in partnership with Co-Impact, a global philanthropic organization. Together, they plan to support 22 organizations across the world, with five based in Africa, over the next three years.

The initiative comes at a time when global aid cuts have forced many women’s health programs to scale back. “Women and girls are often the first to feel the impact of shrinking aid,” said one of the fund’s partners, emphasizing the need for sustainable, locally driven solutions.

In addition to the initial $70 million, the Women’s Health Co-Lab aims to mobilize another $30 million to expand its reach and impact. The fund will prioritize projects that empower women leaders and promote equitable access to health care.

Supporters say the initiative represents a growing trend of collaborative philanthropy designed to fill the gaps left by reduced government funding. By pooling resources and focusing on community-led change, the fund hopes to build long-term resilience in global women’s health systems.

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According to a joint study by the World Health Organization and several UN agencies, Africa’s maternal mortality ratio declined from 748 per 100,000 live births in 2000 to 454 in 2023 — equivalent to about 3 million fewer deaths over that 23-year period.

The WHO attributes this decline to growing access to trained birth professionals, better health infrastructure, and targeted interventions in handling pregnancy-related complications.

Major investment in sexual and reproductive health has also played a crucial role, with wider implementation of the WHO’s Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality (EPMM) framework contributing to these improvements.

Notably, skilled attendance at birth has risen to 65% — up from just 44% in 2000 — a development the report credits as a key driver of the decline in fatal outcomes from haemorrhage and infection, the two leading causes of maternal death.

The report also highlights the importance of political will and stronger referral networks, which have enabled more women to access care that can make the difference between life and death.

Still, UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell has cautioned that reductions in global health funding, especially from the United States, threaten to roll back some of these hard-fought gains — particularly in fragile or underserved regions.

“Slashing global health budgets risks pushing more women into danger during pregnancy and childbirth, especially where basic care is already scarce,” she said.

Regionally, East Africa has made the biggest leap, slashing maternal deaths by over 60%, from 75,000 in 2000 to 42,000 by 2023 — an annual drop of 4.8%, thanks to wider access and policy support in countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia.

North Africa follows with a 57.9% drop, cutting deaths from 11,000 to 5,900 — largely due to improved prenatal services. Central Africa tells a more complex story: while its maternal mortality ratio fell by 43.2%, overall deaths rose from 32,000 to 34,000, a result of population growth outpacing health improvements.

In Southern Africa, maternal mortality declined by 31.5%, but the relatively slow annual progress rate of 2.6% underscores persistent rural healthcare gaps.

West Africa remains a key area of concern. Despite a 25.3% reduction in the ratio, the region still registered a rise in total maternal deaths — reaching 102,000 in 2023, the highest on the continent — as countries like Nigeria and Ghana continue to grapple with overstretched health systems.

Globally, 2023 saw more than 260,000 women lose their lives due to pregnancy-related complications — an average of 712 deaths per day, or one every two minutes. This equates to a global maternal mortality ratio of 197 per 100,000 live births, across 195 nations.

HIV-related maternal deaths, which once represented a significant burden, have also declined dramatically. Thanks to broader access to antiretroviral treatment and integrated prenatal care, such deaths have dropped by 89% since 2000 and now make up less than 1% of maternal deaths in the region. Countries like Eswatini and Botswana, which embedded HIV services into maternal health systems, saw some of the sharpest declines.

Nonetheless, Africa remains the hardest-hit region, accounting for nearly 70% of maternal deaths globally — approximately 182,000 in 2023 — followed by Southern Asia, with around 17% (43,000 deaths).

The progress remains uneven. Nine countries — including South Sudan, Chad, and Nigeria — continue to record extremely high maternal mortality ratios, exceeding 500 deaths per 100,000 births.

Nigeria stands out with an MMR of 993 and accounts for nearly 29% of all maternal deaths on the continent. This points to a combination of structural weaknesses in healthcare, insecurity, and persistent cultural barriers.

“While progress is evident in several regions, fragile contexts and conflict zones continue to reverse hard-won gains,” the report cautions.

Countries labelled as fragile or conflict-affected by the World Bank — such as Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo — showed slower improvements. In some of these countries, women face a 1 in 51 lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes, more than twice the global average.

The pandemic also disrupted maternal health services temporarily, with global MMR rising in 2021. Africa, however, managed to restore its pre-COVID trajectory by 2022, a feat credited to quick recovery of prenatal and postnatal services.

SEA

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