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Abstract

This paper examines the systematic erasure of West African women from dominant historical narratives of anticolonial liberation, focusing on decolonization and post-independence nation building in Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, and Nigeria. Although women played central roles in organizing, mobilizing, and educating during nationalist movements, their contributions were increasingly sidelined once state power was achieved. Drawing on feminist historiography, Black feminist thought, and archival and literary sources, this study analyzes how state actors dismantled autonomous women’s organizations, including the Federation of Ghana Women, and confined women to symbolic roles within party-controlled structures. Figures such as Hannah Kudjoe, once central to political mobilization, were gradually erased from official histories. Despite this marginalization, African women continued to resist through oral storytelling, community memory, literature, and cultural leadership. These practices preserved alternative ways of knowing grounded in lived experience, kinship, and collective struggle. This paper argues that storytelling, both spoken and written, functioned as a critical tool of resistance that challenged colonial and patriarchal systems while redefining knowledge and leadership. By centering women’s narratives, this research offers a corrective to male dominated histories and highlights the enduring significance of women’s voices in shaping African liberation and feminist thought.

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