African Women Who Preserved Culture
11 women in the archive worked for cultural preservation. 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.
11 women in the archive
Pre-ColonialAbla Pokou
Ashanti princess who led a breakaway people west across the Comoé River during an 18th-century succession war and founded the Baoulé, today one of Côte d'Ivoire's largest nations. Her legend of a mother's terrible sacrifice at the river is one of West Africa's most retold origin stories.
ModernBi Kidude
Zanzibar's legendary taarab singer, who ran away from a forced marriage as a teenager, sang barefoot and unveiled when both were scandalous, kept the island's musical traditions alive across a century, and became a world music star in her nineties.
ModernCesária Évora
Cape Verdean singer known as the 'Barefoot Diva' who brought the melancholic morna music of Cape Verde to the world stage, becoming the most internationally acclaimed African lusophone artist of all time.
Pre-ColonialFatima al-Fihri
Tunisian-born founder of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, recognised by UNESCO and Guinness World Records as the oldest existing, continually operating university in the world.
IndependenceFlora Nwapa
First African woman novelist published in Britain (Efuru, 1966). Founded Tana Press and served as commissioner; called the 'Mother of Modern African Literature'.
Pre-ColonialKimpa Vita
Kongolese prophet who led a religious and political movement to reunify the Kingdom of Kongo, claiming to be possessed by Saint Anthony. Burned at the stake at 22.
IndependenceLadi Kwali
Gbagyi master potter who carried Nigerian hand-building tradition onto the world stage. The first woman at the Abuja Pottery Training Centre, an MBE, an NNOM holder, and the only woman on a Nigerian banknote.
ColonialMekatilili wa Menza
Giriama leader who organised mass resistance against British colonial rule in coastal Kenya, using traditional oaths and dance to unite her people against forced labour and land seizure.
Pre-ColonialNana Asma'u
Scholar, poet, and educator in the Sokoto Caliphate who built one of the earliest known systems of women's education in West Africa, training female teachers who carried learning into rural communities.
ContemporaryNike Davies-Okundaye
Nigerian textile artist and cultural icon who turned her own story of survival into a movement. She runs free arts education programmes that have trained over 3,000 Nigerian women and children. Her galleries in Lagos and Osogbo house one of the largest collections of Nigerian art in private hands. She is simply known as Mama Nike.
Pre-ColonialYennenga
Legendary warrior princess remembered as the mother of the Mossi people of Burkina Faso. A horsewoman and soldier who refused the life mapped out for her, she rode into the wilderness and into the founding story of a nation.