Among the many peace ambassadors are several African women whose contributions have made them trailblazers in conflict mediation and post-conflict reconciliation. Below is a list of African women who remain trailblazers in the quest for peace across the continent.
Americans celebrate with fireworks, lots of parades, concerts, and food as they bond over barbecues with family and friends. While it is a moment of pride and celebration, for many Black Americans, this day holds a deeper, more complicated, and often painful meaning.
When we talk about Africa’s past, it often centers around colonization and how the Europeans dominated the continent. Long before their arrival, Africa was home to powerful ancient kingdoms and empires, some of which were led and protected by women.
African drumming is one of humanity’s oldest technologies. It has been a tool of communication, healing, and ceremony for tens of thousands of years. Rhythms from Mali, Ghana, Senegal, and beyond endured in the forced crossings of the Middle Passage.
The vast halls of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris are hauntingly silent this spring. One prominent case, a towering wooden talking drum known as the Djidji Ayokwê, has just been removed. Its empty plinth is a stark emblem of centuries-old colonial plunder and the long road toward restitution.
Long before formal nursing schools or medical licenses, Black women brought life into the world under the shadow of slavery. Enslaved midwives labored in cramped cabins, relying on generations of oral knowledge to care for mothers and infants alike.
In 1803, at a quiet stretch of the Georgia coast, a group of enslaved Igbo captives made a choice that would echo across centuries and across time. Known as the Igbo Landing, the captives’ collective act of defiance in which they walked into the water, choosing death over bondage, became more than just an event. It became a story of spiritual resistance that lives on in Black memory today.
When Fela Anikulapo Kuti walked the earth, he did so like a man possessed. Not by spirits though the Shrine knew its fair share of ritual but by a vision. Afrobeat was protest, pageantry, and prophecy all in one: 12-minute sermons with horns, funk, pidgin English, and takedowns of military dictators, colonial puppeteers, and capitalist saboteurs.
FIFA World Cup Africa Host tournaments carry singular significance: South Africa 2010 World Cup was Africa’s inaugural stage, showcasing the continent’s capacity and reigniting pride across the diaspora. The event’s economic imprint, dubbed World Cup Economic Impact Africa offers lessons for future bids.
For many, May 25 is just another date on the calendar, but for millions of people across Africa and the diaspora, it is a day that holds great significance – African Liberation Day (ALD). On this day, many African countries and communities around the world celebrate the hard-fought achievement of their freedom from European colonial powers.
