African Women Who Fought for Women in Politics
8 women in the archive worked for women's political participation. They came from different countries and different centuries, but each of them saw a wrong that others accepted and set out to change it. Read their stories to see how the same cause looked from very different lives.
8 women in the archive
IndependenceGisèle Rabesahala
Madagascar's pioneering stateswoman: at 17 she joined the nationalist struggle, at 27 became the first Malagasy woman to lead a political party, and in 1977 became the country's first woman government minister.
ModernInonge Mbikusita-Lewanika
Zambian politician and diplomat. MP and minister; Ambassador to the US and to Ethiopia; advocate for women's rights and multiparty democracy in Zambia.
ColonialMabel Dove Danquah
Ghanaian journalist and satirist who, in 1954, became the first woman elected to any African legislative assembly, after two decades of skewering colonial power in the press under a rotation of witty pen names.
IndependenceMargaret Ekpo
Nigerian women's rights activist and pioneer politician who mobilised thousands of women in Eastern Nigeria during the independence era, breaking into a political system designed to exclude them.
ModernNana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings
Former First Lady of Ghana (1982–2001). Founded the 31st December Women's Movement; ran for president in 2016; advocate for women's empowerment and development.
IndependenceRose Chibambo
Malawian independence activist and politician who was a founding leader of the Malawi Congress Party, mobilising women across the country in the fight against British colonial rule.
ModernRuth Sando Perry
Liberian schoolteacher and senator who became the first woman to head an African state in modern times. Handed a country of warring warlords in 1996, she disarmed the fighters, brought the refugees home, and delivered free elections in eleven months.
IndependenceSophie Kanza
Sociologist and stateswoman who became the first Congolese woman to earn a university degree and, at twenty-six, the first woman ever to hold government office in the DRC, before rising to senior leadership at UNESCO.