Toyin Saraki

"Midwives are absolutely crucial to achieving substantial improvements in maternal health. Midwives empower mothers to make life-saving choices for their children before, during, and after childbirth. A skilled midwife can provide expert care that ensures the survival of newborns during the first fragile 24 hours of life, and enables them to not only survive, but also thrive well into childhood. Midwives empower women at a time when their health is at its most vulnerable. Midwives empower women in a way that can help shape the future health of both mother and baby. After all, we know that an empowered woman is a health-seeking woman for herself, her family and her community."

"A lot of us have grown up with cultures where strong women have worked very hard but they have not necessarily tried to rise because they have felt that leadership is the province of men… So I believe that our biggest challenge as women is to be able to step forward and to actually lead."

"If I had to put it down to one thing that would make a woman successful, it would be to keep learning and keep applying what you have learnt. And once we keep learning and keep applying what we have learnt, we keep stepping up one more step."