54 Books By Women From Each Of Africa's 54 Countries

In our latest book recommendation, we take you on a journey across Africa to highlight books by women from all corners of the continent. These books have broken boundaries and contributed significantly to the growth of African storytelling.

I read a book by a Cameroonian author for the first time in 2024. As someone with a background in African history, this is not an easy admission. But on the other hand, it marks a moment of growth and intentionality in my reading. While compiling this list has been a passion project, it has also reinforced how much work remains in documenting stories by African women. For instance, it was only in 2001 that the first woman from Chad published a book—Marie-Christine Koundja’s Al-Istifakh, ou, L’idylle de mes Amis. Similarly, Dina Salústio’s The Madwoman of Serrano became the first novel by a female author to be published in Cape Verde (1998) and the first to be translated into English (2019).

The 54 books in this recommendation span genres—from fiction and poetry to memoir and historical accounts—offering intimate and often underexplored stories of African life across different time periods and social realities. Assia Djebar’s Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, for example, gives voice to Algerian women navigating the postcolonial era, while Deolinda Rodrigues’ Diário de um Exílio sem Regresso (Angola) provides a firsthand account of exile and sacrifice in the struggle for independence.