Bio
Yaba Badoe is a Ghanaian-British author, journalist, and filmmaker born in 1955. Although the Tamale-native moved to Britain at a young age, she never lost touch with her home country. After obtaining her degree from King’s College at Cambridge University, Badoe moved back to Ghana to work as a civil servant at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Eventually, she returned to the UK to obtain a second degree, after which she became a General Trainee with the BBC. Badoe is also a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, and has been an educator in both Spain and Jamaica. She currently lives in London with her husband.
Badoe’s initial work in the arts was as a producer and documentary filmmaker, with her filmography including Black and White (1987), I Want Your Sex (1991), Honourable Women (2010), The Witches of Gambaga (2010), and The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo (2014). Many of her works deal with topics such as race and racism, especially in the UK or the West more generally, but Badoe has also created works that shed light on the plight of women of colour, both in the UK and in Africa. Her documentary, The Witches of Gambaga, for which she won the Best Documentary Award at the 2010 Black International Film Festival, focuses on Ghanaian women who are forced to live away from their families and communities for being suspected of being witches. Badoe has additionally contributed to the creation of multiple documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV.
Aside from being a filmmaker, Badoe is also an award-winning author of creative fiction for both adults and children. Her short stories, aimed at adult readers, have been published in places such as Critical Quarterly and African Love Stories: An Anthology (2006). Her writing for children and young adults includes the short story collection The Secret of the Purple Lake (2017), and the novels A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars (2017), Wolf Light (2019), Lionheart Girl (2021), and Man-Man and the Tree of Memories (2023). Her children’s writing has been nominated for several prizes, including the Branford Boase Award, the Jhalak Prize, and the Edward Stanford Children’s Travel Book of the Year. Her stories often feature Ghanaian characters, although she also explores the complex relationship between characters from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Selected Prizes and Nominations
• Branford Boase Award
• CILIP Carnegie Award
• Jhalak Prize
• Edward Stanford Children’s Travel Book of the Year
• Best Documentary Award 2010
• FESPACO 2011
• Distinguished Woman of African Cinema Award 2014
Bibliography
Aidoo, Ama Ata, editor. African Love Stories: An Anthology. Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2006.
Badoe, Yaba, director. The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo. 2014.
—. A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars. Zephyr, 2017.
—. Lionheart Girl. Head of Zeus, 2021.
—. Man-Man and the Tree of Memories. Bloomsbury, 2023.
—. The Secret of the Purple Lake. Cassava Republic, 2017.
—. True Murder. Vintage Publishing, 2009.
—, director. The Witches of Gambaga. Fadoa Films Ghana and UK, 2010.
—, director. Supercrips and Rejects. Fulcrum TV, 1996.
—, director. Voluntary Service Overseas. Fulcrum TV, 2002.
—, director. Honourable Women. 2010.
—. Wolf Light. Zephyr, 2019.
—. “The rival.” Critical Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 3, 1998: pp. 36-42.
—. “Christmas with Aunt Ama.” Critical Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 4, 1997: pp. 56-64.
—. “Talitha.” Critical Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 4, 1998: pp. 40-46.
—. “The dream lover.” Critical Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 1, 1993: pp. 37-50.
—. “What makes a woman a witch?” Feminist Africa, vol. 5, 2005: pp. 37-51.
—. “Representing Witches in contemporary Ghana.” Feminist Africa, vol. 16, 2021: pp. 82-97.
—. “Making The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo: An Interview with Yaba Badou.” Interview with Minna Niemi. ariel: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 49, no. 2-3, 2018: pp. 257-269.
—. “Women at Ouagadougou: Yaba Badou Talks to Three Women Directors at This Year’s Fespaco.” Feminist Africa, no. 4, 2005: n.p.
—. “Barbara Bosswell from the Feminist editorial team speaks to Ghanaian-British filmmakes, journalist and fiction writer, Yaba Badoe.” Interview with Barbara Boswell. Feminist Africa, vol. 2, 2003.
Badoe Yaba, Amina Mama, and Salem Mekuria. “African Feminist Engagements with Film.” Feminist Africa, vol. 16, 2012: pp. 1-7.
Busby, Margaret (editor). New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent. Amistad, 2019.
De Loughry, Treasa. “Unruly magic: Global resource extraction, witchcraft, resistance in Yaba Badoe’s The Witches of Gambaga (2011) and Wolf Light (2018).” Feminist Theory, vol. 25, no. 3, 2023: pp. 178-186.
Ellerson, Beti. “A Conversation with Yaba Badoe.” African Women in Cinema Blog, 1 Sept 2011. Web.
—. “African Women and the Documentary: Storytelling, Visualizing History, from the Personal to the Political.” Black Camera, vol. 8, no. 1, 2016: pp. 223-239.
Hines, Joanna. “True Murder by Yaba Badoe.” Rev. of True Murder, by Yaba Badoe. The Guardian, 8 Aug 2009, Web.
Jones, Nicolette. “Children’s Book of the Week: A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars by Yaba Badoe.” The Times, 11 March 2008, Web.
Mahnke, Hans-Christian. “Ululating Ama Ata Aidoo.” Sister Namibia, vol. 27, no. 2, 2015: pp. 26-27.
Rosiek, Natalie. “Shadows of Suspicion Representations of Witchcraft and Misogony across Cultures.” Something Wicked, Witchcraft in Movies, Television and Popular Culture, edited by Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024
“Yaba Badoe.” African Film Festival New York, africanfilmny.org/directors/yaba-badoe/.
“Q&A: Writer and Filmmaker Yaba Badoe.” Africa in Words, 6 Oct 2017. Web.
