Aminata Diaw

Aminata Diaw Cisse, who lived from 1959 to 2017, was a Senegalese lecturer and political philosopher who taught at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, one of the first Senegalese women to teach philosophy there. Beginning in 1986, she wrote on citizenship, civil society, democracy, development, ethnicity, gender, globalization, human rights, identity and the state as examined through African and Senegalese contexts, drawing significantly on the political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She held fellowships with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, UNESCO and the Rockefeller Foundation, and was a prominent advocate for women's rights and gender equality in African scholarship.