Safia Ibrahim’s business was in trouble. Covid-19 had taken hold in Somaliland, in the Horn of Africa. The 50-year-old widow with 10 children to support set out door to door on the capital’s outskirts, a razor at hand, taking advantage of the lockdown to seek work with a question: Have your daughters been cut?

Her business is female circumcision, learned at the age of 15, performed hundreds of times and now being passed along to her daughters. She congratulates young girls upon completing the procedure: “Pray for me, I’ve made you a woman now.”

Her story echoes through Muslim and other communities in a broad strip across Africa south of the Sahara. In many places, Covid-19 brought stark challenges to efforts by health workers and activists to stop what they call female genital mutilation.

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