Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900–1978) was born in Abeokuta, in present-day Ogun State, Nigeria. She was one of the first women to attend Abeokuta Grammar School in 1914, where she would go on to teach.
In 1919 she left for Wincham Hall School for Girls, Cheshire, England, to pursue her studies. By the time of her return to Nigeria in 1922, no doubt in reaction to the racism she had encountered in Britain, she had dropped her Christian name, Frances Abigail.
She soon became associated with some of the most important anti-colonial educational movements in Nigeria and West Africa*, and fought tirelessly to further women’s access to education and political representation
* The Nigerian Union of Teachers, Nigerian Union of Students, West African Students’ Union, and Nigerian Youth Movement
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti at her 70th birthday on 24 October 1970. Ransome-Kuti family archives.
Her children Beko, Olikoye and Fela, would all go on to play important roles in education, healthcare, the arts and political activism.
In 1944, she founded the Abeokuta Ladies’ Club (later, the Abeokuta Women’s Union), committed to defending women’s political, social and economic rights, which became one of the most important women’s movements of the twentieth century. Her unwavering commitment to cooperation, solidarity and unity led her to play an active role in politics, notably in the pre-independence constitutional negotiations of 1946.
