Born: 12 July 1912, Mali
Died: 17 May 1980
Country most active: Mali
Also known as: NA
Aoua Keïta was a midwife, activist, and politician, recognized as a prominent figure in Mali’s struggle for independence, trade unionism and feminism.
Born in 1912 in what was then French Sudan, Kéita defied gender and racial norms as one of the few African girls allowed to enroll in the first girls’ school in Bamako, the École des filles and the Orpheliat des Métisses boarding school, which was typically for well-off mixed-raced girls. She went on to earn her degree in midwifery at the Ѐcole de Médecine de Dakar in 1931 – again, one of the first Black African women to do so, and one of few Malian women at the time to complete a professional degree.
She began working for the colonial government, working in Gao for 12 years, where she met and married the physician Daouda Diawara. Together, the couple joined the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (African Democratic Assembly or RDA) when it was founded in 1946. Kéita’s political involvement outlived the marriage, which ended in divorce in 1949. The colonial government punished her by sending her to increasingly remote areas. In 1951, she gave up her French citizenship and supported the RDA in the 1951 elections, when it won three seats in Parliament.
In 1957, Kéita co-founded the Union of Salaried Women of Bamako with Aissata Sow. The following year, she was elected to the RDA’s executive committee, and was elected as a member of Parliament in 1959. She was part of the committee that drafted the country’s constitution.
When Mali gained independence in 1960, Kéita was the only woman elected to the new National Assembly; she was the first woman from a French-speaking West African country elected to a National Legislative Assembly. When the Commission Sociale des Femmes was established in 1962 with her as secretary-general, she was the only woman in RDA party leadership. Kéita was the driving force behind drafting and implementing the Marriage and Guardianship Code that granted new rights to Malian women.
Despite her years of hard work, political tides shifted in the 1960s and she was forced out by a rival, Mariam Kéita, wife of president Modibo Kéita. He was overthrown in a 1968 coup, at which point Aoua Kéita left the country for The Congo, publishing her autobiography, Femme d’Afrique: La vie d’Aoua Kéita racontée par elle-même, in 1975. It earned the Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire, one of various awards she received in her lifetime.