An analysis of the African Union approach to eliminating violence against women shows that while the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Maputo Protocol) refined the culture/violence nexus, the subsequent regional frameworks reverted to culture-centered explanations. Tornius’s critical analysis reveals how the relationship between culture and gender discourses has changed over time, entangled with processes of colonialism, decolonization, emergence of African socialisms, the end of the Cold War, and the advent of African feminisms. Articulating gendered violence through undefined ahistorical and apolitical notions of “culture” has real life adverse effects for women through ineffective policy and development interventions.

The African Union (AU) has developed an elaborate gender governance architecture, including gender machineries and women’s desks, policy frameworks, path-breaking women’s rights laws, and ongoing campaigns on women’s rights–related issues. At the same time, the member states’ engagement with this architecture is at best lukewarm, with a lack of domestication, compliance, and accountability. This paradox is addressed in this article by developing the theoretical thinking around aspirational politics (Martha Finnemore and Michelle Jurkovich, ‘The politics of aspiration’, International Studies Quarterly, 64:4 [2020], pp. 759–69) and political brokers (Stacie E. Goddard, ‘Brokering change: Networks and entrepreneurs in international politics’, International Theory, 1:2 [2009], pp. 249–81), showing the social and relational origins of pan-African gender governance. In doing so, the article examines how ‘aspirational politics’ can be operationalized to examine the sociocultural and political production of shared future imaginaries. The paper focuses on AU femocrats as the key actors for AU’s aspirational gender agenda and argues for their importance as political brokers between AU member states, donors, UN agencies, and civil society organisations. By mobilizing actors and facilitating common ground and agreement, their institutionalized broker position allowed for various political entrepreneurs to emerge and thrive. At the same time, their pursuits are met with ‘aspirational fatigue’ or outright contestation by the member states. The case of the AU demonstrates how aspirational politics is not a ‘phase’ leading to norms governance but part and parcel of normative negotiation and engagement.