Contemporary African Women Making History
History is still being written. The women in this collection are shaping Africa right now, in parliaments, courtrooms, laboratories, film studios, and on the world stage. Their stories are not finished, which makes them all the more worth following.
59 women from the Contemporary era
ContemporaryAdenike Oladosu
Nigerian climate activist and the first African woman to lead a Fridays for Future climate strike. Campaigns tirelessly for the drying Lake Chad basin, a slow-moving environmental disaster affecting 40 million people across four countries. Named one of the most influential climate voices of her generation.
ContemporaryAgathe Uwilingiyimana
Rwanda's first and only female Prime Minister, a chemistry teacher who abolished ethnic quotas in schools, stood against Hutu Power extremism, and was assassinated with her UN guards in the opening hours of the 1994 genocide.
ContemporaryAmeenah Gurib-Fakim
Mauritian biodiversity scientist who became the sixth President of Mauritius (2015–2018) and the first woman to hold the office. A world-leading researcher in medicinal plants of the Mascarene Islands, she has bridged science, politics, and advocacy for women and the environment.
ContemporaryAmina J. Mohammed
Nigerian diplomat and UN Deputy Secretary-General since 2017. Formerly Nigeria's Minister of Environment. One of the chief architects of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global framework guiding international development until 2030. The highest-ranking Nigerian in the history of the United Nations.
ContemporaryAminatou Haidar
The 'Sahrawi Gandhi', a nonviolent resistance leader who survived four years of secret detention and torture, and whose 32-day airport hunger strike in 2009 forced Morocco into a rare public climb-down before the eyes of the world.
ContemporaryAngélique Kidjo
Beninese singer who refused to perform propaganda for a dictatorship, fled to Paris in 1983, and became a five-time Grammy winner, UNICEF ambassador, and the first Black African artist honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
ContemporaryAsha-Rose Migiro
Tanzanian lawyer and diplomat who became the first African woman to serve as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, after breaking a 45-year barrier as her country's first female foreign minister.
ContemporaryAsmaa Mahfouz
Egyptian activist whose video blog posts in January 2011 called on Egyptians to protest in Tahrir Square and helped spark the Egyptian Revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. She was 25 years old. Her four-minute video is considered one of the most significant acts of citizen activism in the history of the Arab world.
ContemporaryCaster Semenya
South African middle-distance runner who won Olympic gold in the 800m at Rio 2016 and is a two-time World Champion. She has been forced to fight World Athletics testosterone regulations and has become a global symbol of bodily autonomy and the right of women athletes to define themselves.
ContemporaryChimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Award-winning Nigerian novelist and feminist icon. Author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, and the viral TED talk 'We Should All Be Feminists', which reached hundreds of millions of listeners after Beyoncé sampled it. One of the most influential voices on feminism, race, and African identity in the world today.
ContemporaryDerartu Tulu
Ethiopian long-distance runner who became the first Black African woman to win an Olympic gold medal, at Barcelona 1992. Her victory lap with white South African Elana Meyer became a symbol of post-apartheid reconciliation.
ContemporaryDestiny Ayo Vaughan
Founder of Mind the Gap Ireland and a survivor of child trafficking. Brought from Nigeria at five and held captive in Ireland for five years, she came through the foster care system, earned her degrees on scholarship, and became a TEDx speaker and United Nations delegate. She turned her own silence into a place where hundreds of others can speak.
ContemporaryEdna Adan Ismail
Somaliland's first qualified nurse-midwife sold everything she owned to build a maternity hospital on a former garbage dump, where she has overseen the safe delivery of more than 30,000 babies and trained thousands of midwives.
ContemporaryEsther Mahlangu
South African Ndebele artist who learned to paint murals at ten with chicken feathers, and in 1991 became the first woman and first African to paint a BMW Art Car, carrying her people's geometric patterns from a village wall to museums around the world.
ContemporaryFatima Jibrell
Somali environmentalist who took on the warlord-financed 'charcoal wars' devastating her country's acacia forests, won an 80% cut in charcoal exports, and earned the Goldman Environmental Prize, all in a country with no functioning state.
ContemporaryFatou Bensouda
Gambian lawyer who served as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court from 2012 to 2021, making her one of the most powerful legal figures in the world. She prosecuted war criminals, challenged powerful governments, and showed that African women belong in the highest rooms of international justice.
ContemporaryFolorunṣo Alakija
Nigerian businesswoman, philanthropist, and one of Africa's wealthiest women, who built a fashion empire before entering the oil industry, and now dedicates her wealth to education and poverty alleviation through the Rose of Sharon Foundation.
ContemporaryGenevieve Nnaji
Nigerian actress and filmmaker who became the face of Nollywood for a generation and then directed Lion Heart, the first Netflix original film from Nigeria. She proved that African stories told by Africans can reach the entire world.
ContemporaryGertrude Mongella
Tanzanian stateswoman who served as Secretary-General of the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women, the summit that produced the world's defining gender-equality blueprint, and became the first President of the Pan-African Parliament.
ContemporaryGrace Mary Mugasa
Ugandan politician and the first woman to serve as Mayor of Hoima, who guided the oil-rich municipality through its elevation to city status and later became a State Minister while championing gender equality and clean urban environments.
ContemporaryHauwa Ibrahim
Nigerian human rights lawyer who defended women sentenced to death by stoning under Sharia law, at great personal risk. The first woman to argue before Sharia courts in northern Nigeria. Awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2005.
ContemporaryHawa Abdi
One of Somalia's first female gynecologists turned her one-room farm clinic into a refuge for 90,000 displaced people, and faced down 750 militants who stormed it.
ContemporaryIsatou Ceesay
Gambian environmental activist known as the 'Queen of Recycling' who empowers women by transforming plastic waste into income-generating products.
ContemporaryJoyce Banda
Malawian politician who became the first female president of Malawi and only the second female head of state in African history. She rose from humble beginnings to lead a country through a genuine economic crisis, and never stopped fighting for women and girls.
ContemporaryJulienne Lusenge
Congolese human rights activist who has spent decades fighting sexual violence as a weapon of war in the DRC, founding organisations that provide legal aid, counselling, and economic support to survivors.
ContemporaryLupita Nyong'o
Kenyan-Mexican actress who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years a Slave (2013) and has since used her platform to champion representation, diversity in Hollywood, and anti-colorism advocacy. She is one of the most visible African women in global cinema.
ContemporaryMame Madior Boye
Career magistrate who broke Senegal's highest glass ceiling in 2001 as the country's first female Prime Minister, then carried her jurist's discipline to the African Union as envoy for the protection of civilians in armed conflict.
ContemporaryMamphela Ramphele
South African doctor, academic, activist, and former World Bank Managing Director. She was the life partner of Steve Biko, survived apartheid harassment and banishment, and went on to become one of the most accomplished South African women of her generation.
ContemporaryMeaza Ashenafi
The lawyer who defended a 14-year-old girl for killing her abductor, helped outlaw marriage by abduction, and became the first woman to lead Ethiopia's Supreme Court.
ContemporaryNawal El Moutawakel
The Moroccan hurdler who won the first ever women's 400m hurdles at the 1984 Olympics, becoming the first Moroccan, Arab, African, and Muslim woman to take Olympic gold, then rose to the top of world sport as an IOC Vice President.
ContemporaryNetumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah
Namibian freedom fighter and veteran diplomat, known simply as NNN, who joined SWAPO at 14, survived arrest and exile under apartheid rule, and in March 2025 became Namibia's first female president, leading a country where women also held the vice presidency and the Speaker's chair.
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.
ContemporaryNkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
South African politician and physician who served as the first woman Chairperson of the African Union Commission, having previously led South Africa's transformation of its healthcare system as Minister of Health.
ContemporaryObiageli Ezekwesili
Nigerian economist, public servant, and global advocate for education and accountability. Co-founder of Transparency International Nigeria, Vice President of the World Bank for Africa, and Nigeria's Federal Minister of Education. Co-launched the #BringBackOurGirls campaign in 2014 after the Chibok kidnappings, a global movement that changed how the world talks about violence against girls.
ContemporaryOmotola Jalade-Ekeinde
Nigerian actress and humanitarian who has starred in over 300 films, been named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and used her platform to campaign for women and girls across Africa. She is one of the most recognisable faces on the continent and one of Nollywood's greatest stars.
ContemporaryOnyeka Onwenu
Nigeria's 'Elegant Stallion': singer, journalist, actress and public servant whose hit songs preached unity and family planning, whose 1984 documentary indicted oil corruption, and who spent a lifetime refusing to stay in one lane.
ContemporaryOumou Sangaré
Malian Wassoulou singer known as the Songbird of Wassoulou who has used her voice since the late 1980s to challenge forced marriage, polygamy and the silencing of women, while building an international career that includes a Grammy and a sample on Beyoncé’s Lion King project.
ContemporaryPhumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
South African politician and activist who became the first female Deputy President of South Africa (2005–2008) and served as Executive Director of UN Women (2013–2021). She has championed the Generation Equality Forum and the global women's rights agenda.
ContemporaryRebecca Lolosoli
Samburu matriarch who founded Umoja, believed to be Africa's first all-women village: a self-governing refuge for survivors of violence that has defied threats, armed attacks and tradition for over three decades.
ContemporaryRose Lokissim
One of Chad's first female soldiers, who resisted the dictator Hissène Habré from inside his secret-police prisons, documenting atrocities until she was executed. Her defiance, recorded by her own torturers, later helped bring Habré to justice.
ContemporarySahle-Work Zewde
Ethiopia's first female president, elected in 2018. A career UN diplomat who served as Director-General of UNON in Nairobi, she brought decades of international experience to a role that, while ceremonial, carries enormous symbolic weight.
ContemporarySamia Suluhu Hassan
Tanzania's first female president, sworn in March 2021 after the death of John Magufuli. She shifted the country's COVID response, reopened diplomatic relations, and liberalised the media.
ContemporaryScholastique Mukasonga
Rwandan writer who lost 37 members of her family, including her mother, in the 1994 genocide, and turned memory into literature, winning France's Renaudot Prize for Our Lady of the Nile.
ContemporarySegenet Kelemu
Ethiopian molecular plant pathologist who rose from a farming family in Gojjam to become the first woman to lead the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, putting insect science at the heart of Africa's food security.
ContemporarySpecioza Wandira-Kazibwe
Ugandan doctor and politician who became Africa's first female vice president when she was elected to that office in 1994. She served for ten years, championing public health and women's rights from one of the continent's highest political positions.
ContemporarySusan Kigula
Sentenced to death at 23, she studied law from her cell, led a petition on behalf of all 417 people on Uganda's death row, and won the landmark ruling that abolished the country's mandatory death penalty.
ContemporarySylvia Tamale
Uganda's trailblazing feminist legal scholar: the first female Dean of Law at Makerere University, whose books on gender, sexuality and decolonisation have become core texts across Africa and beyond.
ContemporarySylvie Kinigi
Economist who became Burundi's first female Prime Minister in 1993, survived the coup that killed the president three months later, and as acting head of state held a shattered government together long enough to hand power back to an elected successor.
ContemporaryTebello Nyokong
Lesotho-born South African chemist, a shepherd girl who became a Fellow of the Royal Society, whose light-activated cancer therapy research aims to give Africa a gentler, cheaper alternative to chemotherapy.
ContemporaryTegla Loroupe
Kenyan marathon champion who broke world records and then used the platform of sport to build peace in conflict-torn communities across East Africa. Chef de Mission for the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team at Rio 2016. Founder of the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation and multiple peace race initiatives in war zones.
ContemporaryTheresa Kachindamoto
Malawian paramount chief who has annulled over 3,500 child marriages in her district, sending girls back to school and challenging deeply entrenched traditions that rob girls of their futures.
ContemporaryTsitsi Dangarembga
Zimbabwean novelist and filmmaker whose debut, Nervous Conditions, became the first novel in English by a Black Zimbabwean woman. Arrested in 2020 for protesting government corruption.
ContemporaryUnity Dow
Botswana lawyer who took her own government to court in the landmark Attorney General v Dow case, forced the rewriting of a citizenship law that treated women as lesser parents, and went on to become her country's first female High Court judge, a cabinet minister and a novelist.
ContemporaryVanessa Nakate
Ugandan climate justice activist who became the leading voice for Africa and the Global South after being literally cropped out of a photo with white activists. She turned that act of erasure into a platform heard at the UN, at Davos and at every major climate summit.
ContemporaryWanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg
Kenyan academic and activist who founded the African Women in Leadership Organisation and led one of the most ambitious scholarship programmes for African women in STEM. She has spent her career making sure brilliant African women get the funding, mentorship and platforms they deserve.
ContemporaryWaris Dirie
Somali-born supermodel turned United Nations Special Ambassador who transformed her personal trauma of FGM into a global campaign. Her memoir Desert Flower sold 12 million copies and became an internationally released film. Founder of the Desert Flower Foundation, which has reached millions of women and girls worldwide in the fight to end female genital mutilation.
ContemporaryWinnie Byanyima
Ugandan engineer, diplomat, and global health leader who has spent her career fighting inequality at the highest levels. Currently Executive Director of UNAIDS, leading the global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. One of the most powerful African women in international institutions today.
ContemporaryYvonne Chaka Chaka
South African singer crowned the 'Princess of Africa', whose anthems like 'Umqombothi' conquered the continent under apartheid and who transformed her fame into one of Africa's most powerful voices against malaria and HIV/AIDS.
ContemporaryZanele Muholi
South African visual activist whose portrait archives of Black lesbian and trans lives, and searing self-portrait series 'Somnyama Ngonyama', have filled the world's great museums and won photography's most prestigious prize.