Mabel Dove Danquah

Mabel Dove Danquah (1905 – 1984) was a Gold Coast-born journalist, political activist, creative writer and one of the earliest women in West Africa to work in these fields. Most notably she became the first woman to be elected a member of any African legislative assembly.

As Francis Elsbend Kofigah notes in relation to Ghana's literary pioneers, "before the emergence of such strong exponents of literary feminism as Efua Sutherland and Ama Ata Aidoo, there was Mabel Dove Danquah, the trail-blazing feminist." She used various pseudonyms in her writing for newspapers from the 1930s: "Marjorie Mensah" in The Times of West Africa; "Dama Dumas" in the African Morning Post; "Ebun Alakija" in the Nigerian Daily Times; and "Akosua Dzatsui" in the Accra Evening News. a lawyer from Sierra Leone, who was the first President of the Gold Coast Bar. While at school in Freetown, she founded a cricket club. Mabel received further education in England at Anglican Convent in Bury St. Edmunds and St. Michael's College, Hurstpierpoint, She was sent back to Freetown, and while there she helped set up a women's cricket club, participated in the local dramatics society and read extensively, before returning at the age of 21 to the Gold Coast. She found employment as a shorthand-typist with Elder Dempster for eight years, then transferred to G. B. Olivant, before going to work as a Manager with the trading company of A. G. Leventis. Through the column "Ladies Corner [later Women's] by Marjorie Mensah" (1931–34), She also won the admiration of the paper's proprietor, whom she eventually married in 1933.

After The Times of West Africa ceased to function, she went on to write for the African Morning Post (1935–40), the Nigerian Daily Times (1936–37), the Accra Evening News (1950–1960s) and the Daily Graphic (1952). When in 1951 she took on the editorship of the Accra Evening News — the paper of the Convention People's Party (CPP), founded in 1948 — she was the second woman ever to edit a newspaper in Ghana. Although the appointment ended after five months because of disagreement with CPP leader Kwame Nkrumah over editorial methods,

Politics Her involvement with politics started after Kwame Nkrumah founded his Convention People's Party (CPP), in 1949, and she became a member of staff of the nationalist Accra Evening News, In the general election of 1954, she was committed to organising women for the CPP, and she was subsequently put up as a CPP candidate for Ga Rural constituency, which she won. Her election made her the first female member of the Legislative Assembly of the Gold Coast and the first African woman elected to an African Legislative Assembly.

Creative writing She was a prolific author over a period of four decades – her published collections of short stories include The Happenings of the Night (1931), The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for Mr Shaw (1934), Anticipation (1947), The Torn Veil (1947), Payment (1947), Invisible Scar (1966) and Evidence of Passion (1969) — until her literary career was curtailed by her blindness in 1972. (her niece Nah Dove featured in the 2019 follow-up volume New Daughters of Africa). A collection of Mabel Dove's work, Selected Writings of a Pioneer West African Feminist (edited by Stephanie Newell and Audrey Gadzekpo), was published in 2004.

Personal life In September 1933, Dove married the political statesman and historian J. B. Danquah and they had a son, Vladimir. Her great-niece, Tiffany Dove-Abbam (daughter of Gisela Abbam), formed The Dove Foundation for Global Change in Dove's honour.