African Descent Archives - Page 51 of 54

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.

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.

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.

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.

Valerie Rodway

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

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.

Jemimah Gecaga

Jemimah Gecaga was the first woman to serve in the legislature of Kenya. In 1952, she founded Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, an organisation that continues to advocate for women’s rights and gender equity in Kenya to this day. In 1958, she was nominated to the Legislative Council in Kenya and became the first woman to serve in the country’s parliament of the country, serving until 1962. She later served as President of the YWCA in Kenya, lectured in home economics at Jeanes School (The Kenya School of Government) and worked as a director at Skyline Advertising. In 1969, she was again nominated as a member of parliament in 1969, serving until 1974.

Tatiana Rusesabagina

Tatiana Rusesabagina is a Rwandan humanitarian who, with her husband Paul Rusesabagina, helped protect 1,268 Hutu and Tutsi refugees in the Hotel des Milles Collines during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Their story was used as the basis for the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda. When Tatiana was working as a nurse, she had faced discrimination because of her Tutsi ethnicity, and her mother was murdered in the genocide along with other family members and their bodies were thrown into a pit with many others. Her father had forged all of her family’s identification cards to say that they were Hutu, but the militia had other ways of tracking Tutsis, which the Hutu people were killing in mass in an attempt to make the Tutsi extinct. The conflict between the two ethnic groups dates back centuries in Rwanda. Paul’s family was of mixed Hutu and Tutsi which meant he was less of a target than a full Tutsi.
Paul had Tatiana come to the hotel, which he managed, for safety with the children. He tried to smuggle them out of the country by hiding in a truck that would take them to the airport, but the militia figured out their plan. Tatiana was a target for brutal beatings because the militia knew that she was the Tutsi wife of the hotel manager. She narrowly escaped death and made it back to the hotel, where she was bed-ridden for several days because of her injuries. The people taking shelter in the hotel were all saved because of Rusesabagina’s careful diplomacy with the government, which included bribing them so they would not enter the hotel and harm anyone
Once they were able to leave the hotel, Paul and Tatiana went to a refugee camp to begin looking for family; they were reunited with Tatiana’s two nieces, who were starving and covered in dirt when they were found. The family escaped to Tanzania and later settled in Brussels, where they often received threats. Paul received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, with Tatiana by his side. The family is still active as advocates for genocide survivors and for the betterment of the Tutsi people in Rwanda. They created the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation in 2005, with a mission to “prevent future genocides and raise awareness of the need for a new truth and reconciliation process in Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region of Africa”.

Alba Roballo

Alba Roballo was a prominent Afro-Uruguayan lawyer, poet and politician, who was Uruguay’s first woman Cabinet member, first woman Culture Minister, and first woman elected to the (then collective) Municipal Council of Montevideo, Uruguay.

Yaa Asantewaa

As Queen Mother of Ejisu, Yaa Asantewaa led the Asante in a war against British colonization between 1900 and 1901, known as the War of the Golden Stool or the Yaa Asantewaa War.