Kate Victoria Teiba Abbam, born Ewura Ekua Badoe (24 October 1934 – May 2016) was a Ghanaian journalist, editor and consultant on women and development.[1][2] Abbam founded Ghana's first women's magazine, Obaa Sima ("The Ideal Woman"), in 1971.[3]
Kate Abbam | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ewura Ekua Badoe 24 October 1934 Cape Coast, Ghana |
| Died | May 2016 (aged 81) |
| Education | Saint Monica's Convent; Mmofraturo School; A. M. E. Zion School; Wesley Girls' High School |
| Alma mater | Queen Elizabeth College University of Ghana, Legon |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, editor and consultant on women and development |
| Known for | Founder of Ghana's first women's magazine |
Life
editAwura Ekuwa Badoe was born on 24 October 1934 in Cape Coast.[4] She was given a Christian education, and renamed Kate Victoria,[5] at Saint Monica's Convent, Cape Coast, Mmofraturo School in Kumasi, the A. M. E. Zion School in Cape Coast and Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast. She won a Ghana government scholarship to read for a degree in Home Science at Queen Elizabeth College in London.[6] She then studied General Science at University of Ghana, Legon.[2] She married Emmanuel Atta Abbam in 1964.[7] From 1964 to 1969 she worked at the Food Research Institute, analysing food and food products.[2]
Kate Abbam founded Obaa Sima as a monthly magazine in 1971. The name, she later explained in an interview, referred to "a woman who is industrious and helps her community... women are called ' obaa sima ' when they have made it through their own efforts – it is the embodiment of the traditional woman".[3] Abbam was owner, editor and principal contributor to the magazine. Her novelette Beloved Twin, for example, was serialized there in 1971–2.[8]
In July 1972, Abbam's husband died, leaving her with small children. She wrote about her treatment as a widow, summarily dispossessed by her husband's family, in Obaa Sima.[5] In 1975 she was awarded a United Nations fellowship to attend the World Conference on Women in Mexico City,[citation needed] reviewing the place of Ghanaian women in the mass media.[9] In 1993, she was enstooled Queenmother of the Anona clan in the Ekumfi Eyisam in the Central Region, making her Nana Assanwa Ewudziwa Gyampaafor II.[2]
She died in May 2016. Her niece is the writer Adwoa Badoe.
Works
edit- Sweet Deceit
- (as Awura-Ekuwa Badoe) Beloved Twin, Scorpio Books Ghana, 1973
- (as Ekuwa Teima Badoe) I Shall Return: romance from the woods. 1975
References
edit- ^ "Kate Abbam passes on" Archived 2019-06-02 at the Wayback Machine, Modern Ghana, 10 May 2016.
- ^ a b c d Edmund Quaynor, "Editor of 'Obaa Sima' magazine passes on" Archived 2019-06-02 at the Wayback Machine, Ghana News Agency, 28 July 2016.
- ^ a b Bryce, Jane (2016). "'Who No Know Go Know': Popular Fiction in Africa and the Caribbean". In Simon Gikandi (ed.). The Novel in Africa and the Caribbean Since 1950. Oxford University Press. p. 224. ISBN 978-0-19-976509-6.
- ^ Ralph Uwechue, Africa Who's Who, 1991, p. 7.
- ^ a b Esi Sutherland-Addy. "Kate Abbam, On Widowhood". In Esi Sutherland-Addy; Aminata Diaw (eds.). Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel. Wits University Press. p. 227.
- ^ Africa Woman, 1975
- ^ The World Who's Who of Women, Melrose Press, 1982, p.1
- ^ Stephanie Newell, "Making up Their Own Minds: Readers, Interpretations and the Difference of View in Ghanaian Popular Narratives" Archived 2022-06-05 at the Wayback Machine, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 67, No. 3 (1997), p. 398.
- ^ Abbam, "Ghanaian Women in the Mass Media", unpublished paper written for International Women's Year, 1975. Cited in Margaret Gallagher, Unequal Opportunities: The Case of Women and the Media Archived 2022-06-05 at the Wayback Machine, UNESCO, 1981.