蜜芽传媒

One of Africa's most celebrated authors and playwrights, Ghanaian Ama Ata Aidoo, has died aged 81.

A renowned feminist, she depicted and celebrated the lives of African women in works such as The Dilemma of a Ghost, Our Sister Killjoy, and Changes.

She opposed what she described as a "Western perception that the African female is a downtrodden wretch".

She also served as education minister in the early 1980s but resigned when she could not make education free.

Nigerian author and publisher Lola Shoneyin has been paying tribute to her. "We're all still mourning... I was a daughter to her, and she was a literary mother to me. She wrote about women, she taught many of us to not be afraid to show our strength."

(Image: Ama Ata Aidoo pictured at the Ake Arts and Book festival in Abeokuta, southwest Nigeria, on November 17, 2017. Credit: PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP via Getty Images)