Kate Abbam

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Kate Victoria Teiba Abbam, born Ewura Ekua Badoe (1934-2016) 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]

Life[]

Awura Ekuwa Badoe was born on October 24, 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,[9] reviewing the place of Ghanaian women in the mass media.[10] 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[]

  • 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[]

  1. ^ Kate Abbam passes on, Modern Ghana, 10 May 2016.
  2. ^ a b c d Edmund Quaynor, Editor of 'Obaa Sima' magazine passes on, Ghana News Agency, 28 July 2016.
  3. ^ a b Jane Bryce (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.
  4. ^ Ralph Uwechue, Africa Who's Who, 1991. p.7
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ Africa Woman, 1975
  7. ^ The World Who's Who of Women, Melrose Press, 1982, p.1
  8. ^ Stephanie Newell, Making up Their Own Minds: Readers, Interpretations and the Difference of View in Ghanaian Popular Narratives, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 67, No. 3 (1997), p. 398
  9. ^ Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Cable 1975ACCRA03748, 13 June 1975.
  10. ^ 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, UNESCO, 1981.
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