"The Queen Is the Neck": Queen Ashley Tells Oxford Summit Africa's Royal Women Must Move From Being Seen to Being Useful

"The Queen Is the Neck": Queen Ashley Tells Oxford Summit Africa's Royal Women Must Move From Being Seen to Being Useful

Her Majesty Queen Ashley Afolashade
OjajaOgunwusi in Oxford 

By Olufemi Odeyemi

OXFORD, United Kingdom. Her Majesty, Queen Ashley Afolasade OjajaOgunwusi stood before some of Africa's most powerful royal women on 17th August, 2026 at Oxford University and delivered a line that has since become the defining quote of the summit: if the king is the head of a kingdom, the queen is the neck, and no head moves without one.

The Nigerian-British born Queen, addressing delegates at the African Global Queens Summit 2026, used the metaphor to challenge the idea that royal women exist only for ceremony. She argued that Queens across the continent have long served as counsellors, mediators, cultural custodians and community builders, even when history credited that work to the throne alone.

Queen Ashley, a chartered accountant by training, spoke to a room that included Queen Mother Manal of Ghana, Queen Thembi Tshabalala Manana of South Africa, Oba Olusegun Aderemi of Aramoko, and royal representatives from Congo, under the patronage of Obonganwan Marie Erete, Queen Aruk II. The summit, running from August 14 to 31, was built around a single ambition: giving Africa's royal women a permanent, collective voice in conversations about land, heritage and development that have historically excluded them.

But the heart of her address was not diplomacy. It was accountability.

She told fellow Queens that a crown introduces a woman, but only her work defines her, and pressed them to stop waiting for relevance to be handed to them. "Find the widows who need support, the children falling through the cracks, the young people without skills and work there, consistently, until influence becomes impact" she said.

Queen Ashley also pushed back on a familiar tension between tradition and women's advancement, insisting the two are not in competition. She described a womanhood that keeps its culture intact while refusing to shrink itself, and closed with a reminder that royal life, for her, still starts at home, with the husband and children she says must never be treated as less important than the platforms she now stands on.

Her closing message to the summit was blunt: African Queens must stop occupying positions and start fulfilling purpose.