Aoua Kéita was a Malian independence activist, politician, feminist, writer, and midwife. Born on July 12, 1912, in then Bamako, French Sudan to Karamogo Kéita, a member of the colonial hygiene service and Miriam Coulibaly, Aoua was one of the few African girls allowed to enroll in the first girls’ school in Bamako. She graduated from the École des filles and the Orpheliat des Métisses boarding school, which normally catered to well-off mixed-raced girls, in 1928, going on to complete her degree in midwifery at the Ѐcole de Médecine de Dakar in 1931. A member of the Franco-African elite, she was one of the few Mali women to obtain a professional degree. Aoua was posted to Gao, where she worked for the colonial government for 12 years.
During her time in Gao, she met and married Daouda Diawara. The doctor introduced her to the world of politics and the couple joined Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (African Democratic Assembly; RDA) upon its founding in 1946. In the same year, Aoua was a member of the team that assisted in the birth of Alpha Oumar Konaré, who would later serve two terms as President of Mali.
Despite their shared interests and a marriage based on equality, Kéita and Diawara divorced in 1949. Putting the marriage behind her, Aoua continued her political activities, which led to the French colonial administration punishing her for her anti-colonial activism. She was sent to increasingly remote locations and in 1951, she relinquished her French citizenship, throwing her weight behind the RDA in the 1951 French elections.
The party won three parliamentary seats and Aoua’s star rose with the RDA. With Aissata Sow, in 1957, she founded the Union of Salaried Women of Bamako, which gave professional women a political voice. In September 1958, she was elected to the RDA’s executive body, the Bureau Politique National. The following year she became a member of Parliament, representing Sikasso. She was then appointed to the committee charged with drafting the constitution of the Sudanese Republic (Mali). Kéita also became the first woman from a Francophone West African country to be elected to the National Legislative Assembly in her country.
When Mali gained its independence (1960), Kéita was the only woman elected to the new National Assembly. Two years later she was the only woman in the party leadership when she became secretary-general of the Commission Sociale des Femmes when it was first established. Kéita was primarily responsible for the drafting and enacting of the Marriage and Guardianship Code, which granted new rights to Malian women.
In the 1960s, however, after decades of tireless activism, the tide began to turn. Mariam Kéita, a political rival and wife of the first president of Mali, Modibo Kéita, pushed her out of government.
Isolated politically and give up midwifery in 1966, Aoua Kéita, left the country after President Modibo Kéita was overthrown in a 1968 coup d’état. She eventually married Djimé Diallo and settled in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo. The couple moved back to Bamako in 1979, where she died on May 7, 1980, at the age of 67.
The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire for her autobiography Femme d’Afrique. La vie d’Aoua Kéita racontée par elle-même (1975), Aoua Kéita is remembered and revered as a freedom fighter, feminist, and stateswoman.
