afrikanwomen:

Ayesha Imam is a women’s rights activist, a researcher, a writer, and trainer on gender issues. 

Dr. Imam obtained her degree in Sociology in London, and her masters in the same subject at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. She went on to obtain her phD in Social Anthropology at the School of African and Asian Studies at the University of Sussex.

Dr. Imam was the Executive Director of BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, a Nigeria-based non-profit organization working for women’s human rights and legal rights under customary, religious, and secular law in Africa and internationally. BAOBAB’s activities include research, publication, training, and awareness-raising campaigns on women’s human rights and state obligations in national and international law.

She also works actively as part of the core group of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), an international solidarity network.

Dr. Imam is the co-founder and former national coordinator of the first feminist organization in Nigeria, Women in Nigeria (WIN). WIN has carried out research and publication on women’s issues and has campaigned for women’s rights and democracy issues. She also initiated and directed Africa’s first Gender Institute, an annual program that trains young academics in gender analysis.

Over the past 20 years, she has been a researcher and lecturer in universities and research institutions in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Senegal. She has researched, lectured, and published widely on women’s human rights, African women’s rights and Muslim laws, gender analysis, gender in development, and democracy issues.

Amazing. And I’d never heard of her before!