Neusa Sousa, 29 years old Portuguese, has a degree in tourism, is a Master’s student in Women’s Studies – Women in Society and Culture at the New University of Lisbon, trained in introductory journalism by CENJOR, is a content producer of the program Welcome to RTP Africa, reporter, event organizer, gender activist, promoter of the empowerment of African women and Afro-descendants, entrepreneur, event organizer and promoter of Afro-entrepreneurship.
Her main brand is the Afro Beauty Tea of which she is founder and CEO, which besides being a platform that empowers black women is an event that has 6 editions, this year under the theme “The path to success”.
In 2022 she launched the afroteacast, a podcast that aims to bring various topics related to the female universe, social problems, africanity, pan-africanism, capitalism, in other words, necessary, important and urgent topics for public debate and reflection.
What is your hope for women in chasing their dreams and realising their ambitions?
From a very young age seeing the way my mother and all black women were treated here in Portugal, I promised myself that I would not be just “another black woman in Portugal”, and when I found myself in a vulnerable situation I had to use my pain to turn it around. Seeing that my battles, the challenges that I overcome every day are the same ones that my sisters overcome, I couldn’t help but create a platform where I could also help other women to dream and not give up on their goals even in the face of obstacles that arise such as single motherhood, or lack of job opportunities, or financial and linguistic issues.
To understand what it is like to be an African or racialized woman, responsible for “cleaning up the world”, women that the heteropatriarchal structure needs but doesn’t recognize their value, women that capitalism uses to enrich even more big structures, women that for centuries have been invisibilized, women that the patriarchal, capitalist, and classicist structure wants to keep invisible. It is these women that my mother once was, that I was in my childhood that I want to give voice to, and I want them to start dreaming and believing that it is possible not to be “just a black woman” anymore.
