This book explores the activism of Black African women during the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Contrary to widespread ideas in contemporary research associating women's activism with globalization, this research emphasizes the fact that, before colonization, Black African women were activists in public sectors perceived as masculine, namely the army and politics.
The book Les femmes dans l'histoire en Afrique noire also shows that, during the colonial period, these women held their heads high in resisting colonization in different African societies. Indeed, Black African women's activism continues in the post-colonial period, despite the challenges posed by colonization, which formalized patriarchal values, tending to exclude them from the public sphere and confine them to the private sphere.
Finally, this research work is an invitation to a renewal of thinking about Black African women, whose multifaceted contributions to the construction of African societies are often invisibilized, even though they can be inspiring for generations in Africa and around the world.