The organizing of African women during and before independence was erased over the years. Independence faces are mainly men, with women in the background or not included at all. Nevertheless, women like Aoua Keita did exist, done their parts, and left us legacies. In this essay, we are unpacking the abundant life of Aoua Keita, a Malian anti-colonial radical activist.
Aoua Keita was born on July 12th, 1912, in Bamako Mali, to Karamogo Keita, a veteran of World WarI, who worked for the colonial hygiene service, and Mariam Coulibaly, a doula from Ivory Coast. Her family descended from Sundiata Kéita, one of the founders of the 13th-century Malian Empire. Karamogo was polygamous. Aoua’s mother was one of Karamogo’s wives who lived in a 25 apartment house. Mariam was originally from the village of Kadjouga and believed men were superior, and women’s role was the household only. She rarely encouraged Aoua to follow any political ambitions.
In her memoir “Femme D’ Afrique, la vie d’ Aoua Keita”, Aoua recalled being 12 years old and immensely angered by women’s status and in the Malian empire. One day, she approached her dad and asked if Allah made everything, so was Allah comfortable and okay with the everyday oppression of women?. This shocked her father. However, Aoua’s father was very progressive and wanted both his daughters and sons to be educated. Aoua attended an only girls’ primary school and a high school for mixed-race girls with few non-mixed girls with class privilege. When she graduated, her father encouraged her to continue her studies. In 1928, she relocated to Dakar, where she attended a Midwifery school. It was the only decent education for women who finished high school in most French West African territories ( Encyclopedia).
In 1931, Aoua graduated and took a post in Gao in a small administrative position in a trading center. Gao was a small town but very traditional. Aoua recognized the blinding effects of polygamy that made the women very vulnerable. She took up leadership by being the midwife who was guiding them with their pregnancies. She was celebrated for her diligence for each pregnancy and her warmest care and welcoming. Her influence in the community grew over the years.
In 1935, Aoua married Daouda Diawara, a medical doctor whom she had worked extensively. The educated couple had agreed to build their relationship on mutual equality. In her memoir, Aoua narrated her wedding night: it was a routine in their culture for an older woman to watch the new couple intercourse and hopefully assist the groom in case the bride resists. Dagnouma showed up that night, and Douada kicked her out. That was their first resistance as a couple against harmful traditions towards women.
Aoua’s love for the community and politics was so strong that she started joining men part of “evolues” who were educated African elites who could discuss their countries’ political situations. In 1945 right after world war II, colonies had grown more vigorous in anti-colonial sentiments with the birth of political parties or alliances all over the continent.
In 1946, with the growth of anti-colonial organizing in the French West-Africa, a conference happed in Bamako, Mali. At that time, Mali was called French Sudan. The conference, which gathers French colonies, saw the birth of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA) as a regional political alliance.
In 1944, Mali had abolished the requirement for ‘married women exercising a profession or professional vocation’ to receive their husbands’ authorization to so. Women could join unions freely and participate in the administration or management of organizations – the only condition being that they should be able to read, write, and speak French fluently. ( UNESCO). Aoua was one of the women who seized the occasion in 1946 to be part of the anti-colonial movement in Bamako. With her husband, she joined RDA. Aoua quickly took up leadership in hosting women’s unions in her clinic. However, her husband insisted that she kept secret, her political organizing. It did not stop that her influence got so strong because of the loyalty from the mothers whose babies she had safely delivered and cared for.
In 1949, Aoua divorced her husband, who wanted to marry another wife. His excuse to break his promise of equality and mutual respect was that Aoua was unable to conceive. Aoua re-affirmed her uncompromising stance to not be in a polygamous relationship
In 1950, Aoua returned to Gao to focus on her political activism entirely. Her divorce was freeing as she tapped into her light and power and not her husband’s shadow. In her memoir, Aoua shared how liberating it was not to be bound to her husband’s submission in public. She established a women’s wing of RDA and mobilized young women in her electoral literature campaign. Aoua became a target of the mad colonial regime. She was then transferred to Senegal right after her party’s elections won in 1951.
Aoua had already dedicated herself to more broad issues, mainly the welfare that the colonial regime managed. In 1957, She co-founded “L’Union des femmes Salaries de Bamako.”. She established “L’Union Generale des Travailleurs de l’ Afrique Noir” and rightfully became a representative at the World Federation of Trade Unions. The role of these unions under Aoua’s leadership was to defend workers’ rights and demand equal salaries for both European and African workers regardless of their gender.
Her loud voice to hold colonial powers accountable for their colonized labor exploitation made her a pioneer in the independence struggle. In 1958, The RDA recognized and celebrated her political activism by making her the RDA’s commissioner for women. As a commissioner, Aoua presented a plan to establish the following goals:
1. Women have to participate in the struggle for their country’s liberation
2. Women have to participate in Mali’s economic development
3. Women have to get improved educational opportunities
4. Women have the right to improved health services
To monitor the goals, Aoua created the Bamako women’s bureau that evaluated the political interests of women and their rights. In 1959, she was elected to the Parliament of Mali and helped draft the constitution on the eve of Mali’s independence.
Aoua then started to tour neighboring countries, promoting the rights to the inclusion of women in political leadership. That gave birth to the Union of West African Women ( UFOA). The first summit of UFOA occurred in Bamako with a program that addressed women’s oppression in particular polygamy and child marriages. However, the summit was criticized as radical and family divisive. Aoua and her colleagues were accused of being elitist, bourgeois with a western agenda that harm men and ignore the cultural nature of relations between men and women.
In 1960, Mali gained its independence, but all women’s organizations were dissolved, leaving Aoua as the only female member of the parliament. She worked with Sira Diop to introduce a marriage code that was partially legislated in 1962. Mali became the first West-African country to have a legal framework governing marriage, limit the amount payable by dowry, prohibiting desertion, and forced marriage. Unfortunately, the prohibition against polygamy and female genital mutilation failed.
On July 31st in 1962, During the first convention of PAWO ( Pan-African Women’s organization) in Dar Es- Salaam, Aoua Keita, with Jeanne Martin Cisse from Guinea and Pauline Clark from Ghana made July 31st, the day of the African woman. In their governing Charter “The Pan- African Women’s Day would serve as an aide-mémoire of the journey that Africans have traveled thus far and a way to look at the road ahead, especially with regard to the concrete actions that can be taken to achieve greater equality for women and assure their empowerment as partners in Africa’s development.”
Aoua was a very radical feminist who uses her liberation and freedom as a woman to demand the collective liberation of everyone. She went into exile in 1968 after the first government was overthrown in a coup. She relocated to Brazaville, where she lived and released her memoir “Femme D’Afrique, la vie d’Aoua Keita.” She returned to Mali and died in 1979.
Aoua Keita was a woman who loved her communities in the truth that when she met a Senegalese political leader who was known to beat his wife, she did not hesitate to call him out.
References
1. https://en.unesco.org/womeninafrica/aoua-keita-0/pedagogical-unit/3
2. https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/keita-aoua-1912-1979
3. Kéita, Aoua. Femme d’Afrique: la vie d’Aoua Kéita raconteé par elle-mème. Paris: Prèsence Africaine, 1975.
4. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Anne Russo and Lourdes Torres, eds. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991.
5. Turrittin, Jane. “Aoua Kéita and the Nascent Women’s Movement in the French Soudan,” in African Studies Review. Vol. 36, no. 1. April 1993, pp. 59–89.
6. Pascale Barthélémy, Africaines et diplômées à l’époque coloniale (1918-1957) [African Women and Higher Education During the Colonial Era (1918-1957)] Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010, 345 p.
7. Sanankoua Bintou, « Femmes et Parlement au Mali. » [“Women and Parliament in Mali”], Afrique contemporaine, vol. 2, n° 210, 2004, pp. 145-156.
8. Adam Ba Konaré, Dictionnaire des femmes célèbres du Mali [Dictionary of Famous Women of Mali], Bamako, Jamana, 1993, 520 p.