Tebello Nyokong

South African chemist and professor Tebello Nyokong is helping to pioneer a safer method of cancer detection and photodynamic therapy, a treatment without the harmful side effects of chemotherapy.

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Rapelang Rabana

Rapelang Rabana is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and speaker who founded the learning technology company Rekindle Learning in 2013.

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Waris Dirie

Model, author, actor and activist Waris Dirie worked for the United Nations from 1997 to 2003 as a Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation. She had written several books on the subject, and in 2002 launched her own non-profit, the Desert Flower Foundation, which raises money to increase awareness about FGM and to help those affected.

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Wided Bouchamaoui

Wided Bouchamaoui is a Tunisian businesswoman who has been the leader of the employers union Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA) since 2011. UTICA was one of the four organisations to form the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, whose aim was to secure a transition to democracy. The Quartet won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize.

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Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr

When she was elected mayor of Freetown in May 2018 (winning almost 60% of the votes), Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr was the city’s first female mayor in nearly 40 years.
Aki-Sawyerr decided to run for mayor after overseeing Operation Clean Freetown, a government initiative that was part of a large post-Ebola recovery effort that began in 2016. The project’s goal was to “[reduce] the risk of epidemics by improving solid waste management in the city.”
“I came face to face with how bad things were” in Freetown, she later said. “I decided I had to run.”
Continuing this work in office, her first priority was to identify the locations with the most egregiously clogged gutters that were missed in Operation Clean Freetown and have them cleared to enable water flow.
While earning her bachelor’s degree in Economics at Fourah Bay College, Aki-Sawyerr was active with AIESEC (the International Association of Students in Economics and Management) and became the first African on the organisation’s Brussels-based International Exchange Committee in 1988.
Aki-Sawyerr’s work during Sierra Leone’s Ebola crisis was recognized with an Ebola Gold Medal by Ernest Bai Koroma in December 2015. In January 2016, she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.

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Dr Yvonne Sylvain

Dr Yvonne Sylvain was the first female doctor from Haiti and the first woman accepted into the University of Haiti Medical School, earning her medical degree in 1940. She played a vital role in providing improved medical access and tools for Haitian citizens and was a leading advocate for the physical, economical, social and political equality of Haitian women.

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Alice Nkom

Alice Nkom is a Cameroonian lawyer, well known for her advocacy in decriminalizin homosexuality in Cameroon. She has been a lawyer in Douala (Cameroon’s largest city) since 1969 when, at age 24, she became the first black French-speaking woman called to the bar in Cameroon.

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Queen Tiye

Queen Tiye was the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, the mother of Akhenaten and grandmother of Tutankhamun. Amenhotep III reputedly relied heavily on his wife’s political advice, being more interested in sports and the outdoors than in his royal duties. She was an important power during both her husband’s and son’s reigns. Known to be wise, intelligent, strong, and fierce, she was able to gain the respect of foreign dignitaries, and foreign leaders were willing to deal directly with her. She was the first Egyptian queen to have her name recorded on official acts.
During her son’s reign, Akhenaten’s correspondence speaks highly of the political influence she wielded at court, and she continued to correspond with people of influence herself.
Between Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, who may have had an incestuous relationship with his mother, many shrines were built for Tiye, most of them during her lifetime. She is shown on the walls of the tomb of Huya – a “steward in the house of the king’s mother, the great royal wife Tiyi” – depicted at a dinner table with Akhenaten, his wifeNefertiti, and their family and then being escorted by the king to her sunshade. In 2010, DNA analysis confirmed her to be the mummy known as “The Elder Lady” found in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35) in 1898.

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Valerie Rodway

Valerie Muriel Rodway was a composer of Guyanese cultural and patriotic songs, inspired by the events surrounding Guyana’s independence in 1966.

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Binao

Binao was a queen of the Bemihisatra group of the Sakalava people of Madagascar from 1881 to 1927. She controlled a relatively small territory on Madagascar’s northwestern coast, consisting of the island of Nosy Be and a stretch of the mainland coast. In the early years of her reign, she faced threats from the ambitions of the mainland’s dominant power, the Merina Kingdom.
Binao allied with France when it intefered in Malagasy politics during the first Franco-Hova War (1883–85), but when the ear ended with France taking de facto control of Madagascar’s foreign policy, Binao was to be disappointed by the French recognising the Merina as the dominant native power on the island.
In 1894–95 France took complete control of the island and established the Malagasy Protectorate, exiling the Merina monarch, Ranavalona III. Binao supported the French and opposed the Menalamba rebellion against the European power two years later. She was confirmed by the French as gouverneur principal of Nosy Be, which had effectively been converted into an internal protectorate within colonial Madagascar under the French politique des races.
Relations with the French deteriorated dramatically in 1918 when a major dispute arose over levying corvée labour under the traditional practice of fanompoana, in which Sakalava subjects paid their respects to their deceased ancestors and reconfirmed their loyalty to the monarch. Binao had been required to obtain French permission for maintenance on the royal tombs but had sought to evade this by sending a request timed to reach colonial authorities after the work had already begun. The plan failed and led to reprisals against subjects who participated in the fanompoana and against Binao herself, who was evicted from her doany (royal palace) and made to pass it on to her half-brother Amada. She was forced to live instead in the town of Hellville (now Andoany), a humiliating blow against the monarchy.

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