Born in 1912 in Bamako, Aoua Keita was the first midwife in her country. Assigned to Gao in 1931, she secured the opening of a maternity ward in 1934. An anti-colonialist activist, Aoua Keita mobilized and united women in all her assignments, notably enabling the Sudanese Union – African Democratic Rally (US-RDA) to grow. In hostile conditions, marked by her divorce, she advocated for the improvement of women's status, notably by creating the Nara Women's Mutual Fund. A trade unionist convinced that politics should not be a matter reserved for men, she was the first woman elected to parliament in her country in 1959. Participating in the drafting of the Malian family code, she was also secretary general of the Pan-African Women's Organization, the originator of International African Women's Day on July 31. Exiled in Brazzaville after the coup d'état against Modibo Keita, she wrote her autobiography Femme d'Afrique in 1975, before returning and dying in Bamako in 1980.
