Tag: african women are history
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New event: Legacy Talk at Young Africa Centre (YAC)
Telling Our Stories: Memory, Archives and Legacy from ‘A Women’s Oral History of West Africa‘ by Sylvia Arthur. Friday, 21 November 2025 at 6.30 pm. Online. About November’s Legacy TalkIn this Legacy Talk, we sit down with Sylvia Arthur to explore the methodology behind A Women’s Oral History of West Africa, uncover the transformative power of archiving, and…
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New event in Lagos, Nigeria
I’m looking forward to presenting A Women’s Oral History Of West Africa at the G.A.S. Foundation‘s re:assemblages Symposium in Lagos, Nigeria, next month. This will be the first time I’ll be speaking about the project on the African continent and in West Africa, no less: Keynote Panel: Rematriating the Archive This keynote panel examines how…
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New online event with Black Women Radicals
Following on from my first in-person event in Berlin last month, I’m looking forward to doing my first online event for “A Women’s Oral History Of West Africa” later this month with the brilliant Black Women Radicals and The School for Black Feminist Politics. Join us online on Saturday, 27 September for “Speaking Herself Into…
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Aja Binta Jammeh Sidibe (1955-2025)
As a journalist, I’m used to working to a deadline and writing against time, but over the last three years, I’ve been in a futile battle with trying to outpace death, which, as a human being, I’ll never get used to. A few days ago, I received a message from my fixer in The Gambia…
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New article on The Guardian
“Women across west Africa have a life expectancy of 59. In a rare project, Sylvia Arthur set out to give voice to those who have lived beyond expectation, whose experiences have been largely overlooked” Click to read the article in full
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The political and the personal
I recently spent time in Togo, in its coastal capital, Lomé, where I had the privilege of speaking with/listening to 23 everyday women over 60 whose lives have been irrevocably impacted by the vicissitudes of the country’s postcolonial politics. Since Togo’s independence from France in 1960 (it was previously colonised by Germany and then partitioned…
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Language and Memory in Gambia’s Ghana Town
Wherever I’ve been on my journey along the coast of West Africa, I’ve encountered communities of Ghanaians who for generations have lived in the country they now call home. These are women whose parents came with them as children from immediate post-independence Ghana and who are now in their 60s and 70s with memories of…
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Annick Balley | 1964-2024
I’m saddened to hear of the passing of Annick Balley, a pioneering journalist and broadcaster who I interviewed at her home in Cotonou, Benin, in October 2022 for A Women’s Oral History of West Africa. Madame Balley had a long and distinguished career in public service broadcasting, rising to the top of her profession as…
Sylvia Arthur 