Sylvia Arthur

A Women’s Oral History of West Africa (AWOHOWA) is a National Geographic Society-supported archive and emerging institution dedicated to preserving and restoring African women’s stories to the historical record.

Across Africa, women have been builders of families, communities, economies, and nations. Yet their lives remain largely absent from archives, history books, and official narratives. AWOHOWA exists to change that.

Through oral history, archival preservation, public engagement, and research, AWOHOWA is creating one of the most ambitious collections of African women’s life stories ever assembled in West Africa. Our goal is not simply to document stories, but to build the memory infrastructure necessary to ensure that African women’s experiences are preserved, accessible, and valued for generations to come.

The women whose stories comprise the archive – market women and fisherwomen, teachers and traders, mothers and grandmothers, and community leaders – are custodians of culture, language, knowledge, and memory. They are living archives.

AWOHOWA focuses on women aged 60 and above, a generation whose lives span some of the most significant transformations in modern African history, from colonialism and independence, military coups and democratic transitions, migration and urbanisation, economic upheaval and technological change.

Their stories offer an extraordinary record of how ordinary people experienced extraordinary historical change.

The first phase of the project documents 100 women across four West African countries—Benin, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Conducted in the women’s own languages and on their own terms, these interviews preserve stories that might otherwise be lost while creating a rich archive of West African women’s knowledge and experience.

Each story stands on its own. Together, they form a collective portrait of more than six decades of West African history, told by the women who lived it.

But AWOHOWA is more than an archive.

It is the foundation of a larger vision: a permanent institution dedicated to African women’s memory. An institution that safeguards oral histories, supports research, inspires creative work, fosters public engagement, and ensures that African women’s contributions are preserved as an essential part of our collective heritage.

By documenting these stories today, AWOHOWA is helping to ensure that future generations inherit a fuller, richer, and more truthful understanding of Africa’s past, and a stronger foundation upon which to imagine its future.