Natella Akaba

Natella Nurievna Akaba (; ; born 14 March 1945) is a historian, politician and civil society leader from Abkhazia.

Early life and career in academia Akaba was born on 14 March 1945 in Moscow. In 1955, her family moved back to Sukhumi. In 1962, Akaba graduated from high school no. 10 (Nestor Lakoba) in Sukhumi. From 1962 to 1967, she studied ethnography at the History faculty of the Moscow State University. In the following years, she was a literary assistant at the newspaper Soviet Abkhazia.

In 1976, Akaba graduated from the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. She subsequently moved to Yerevan where in 1979 she started teaching history at the Yerevan State University and the Yerevan Politechnic Institute. In 1981, Akaba defended her thesis entitled "The Colonial Policy of English Imperialism in Qatar" at the Institute of Oriental Studies.

In 1991, Akaba was elected to the Supreme Soviet of Abkhazia where she became Deputy Chairman of the committee for human rights and interethnic relations. From 1994 to 1995 Akaba was Minister for Information and Press. She remained a member of Parliament until the next election in 1996. and on 2 November 2016. She stepped down in 2019.