Isata Kabia

Isata Bussoh Kabia (born 1972 in Freetown) is a Sierra Leonean politician for the All People's Congress party. She has served in the national parliament, the Pan African Parliament and as a government minister.

Life Kabia was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone. She had an unusual early life as her parents left her and her younger brother with her grandmother in Lunsar when she was three, so that they could establish a life in Britain. They did not return until she was eight by which time she was very attached to her grandmother. They took her and her brother back to the UK and she spent some time having to readjust to her re-united family.

She was homesick for Sierra Leone and her grandmother and her parents paid for to have a vacation in Lunsar. She realised that she was living a very different life in England to her former peers and she and her English schoolmates became involved in fundraising even before the Sierra Leone Civil War began in 1991. Kabia would take holiday jobs to pay for her later visits to Sierra Leone. She graduated in biochemistry in England before she went to America. In the USA she organised a group called African Women of Substance who raised funds and conducted protests.

She was working in the office of her country's president as an advisor on diaspora affairs until she decided to be the first woman to contest the Port Loko District constituency. In the 2012 Sierra Leone election she gained nearly 90% of all the votes. She stood for the All People's Congress party.

She became the Rapporteur of the Pan African Parliament in May 2015. Later that year she made the media when she chose as her private members bill a Safe Abortion Bill.