Ghanaian Author, Professor Ama Ata Aidoo Is Dead, See Her Biography (Photos)

Ghanaian author, Professor Ama Ata Aidoo is reportedly dead. She was 81.

The Family of PROF. AMA ATA AIDOO with deep sorrow but in the hope of the resurrection, informs the general public that our beloved relative and writer passed away in the early hours of this morning Wednesday 31st May 2023, after a short illness.

Ama Ata Aidoo (23 March 1942 – 31 May 2023) was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright and academic. She was Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings’s PNDC administration. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making Aidoo the first published African woman dramatist. As a novelist, she won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1992 with the novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.

Christina Ama Ata Aidoo was born on 23 March 1942 in Abeadzi Kyiakor, near Saltpond, in the Central Region of Ghana. Some sources (including Megan Behrent, Brown University, and Africa Who’s Who) have stated that she was born on 31 March 1940. She had a twin brother, Kwame Ata.

Aidoo was raised in a Fante royal household, the daughter of Nana Yaw Fama, chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor, and Maame Abasema. She grew up at a time of resurgent British neocolonialism that was taking place in her homeland.[citation needed] Her grandfather was murdered by neocolonialists,[citation needed] which brought her father’s attention to the importance of educating the children and families of the village on the history and events of the era. This led him to open up the first school in their village and influenced Aidoo to attend Wesley Girls’ High School, where she first decided she wanted to be a writer.