I’m Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, a Pan‑African feminist: writer, communications strategist, leadership coach, and activist.
My passions intersect at the rich junction of storytelling, sexuality, and social justice. My creative work is rooted in amplifying African women’s voices. In 2009 I co-founded Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, a pioneering blog, podcast, and festival giving space to candid conversations about sex, desire, and pleasure.
In July 2021, my book The Sex Lives of African Women was published, it blends personal narratives to explore sexuality across the African continent and diaspora. The Economist named it a Best Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly praised its “astonishing” insightsIn 2026, My second book—Seeking Sexual Freedom: Rites, Rituals and Sankofa—is due from Dialogue/Simon & Schuster.
In recognition of my work, the BBC named me one of 100 Inspirational and Influential Women in 2022, and CNN featured me in its film "Not Yet Satisfied".
I’ve also authored short stories, edited feminist anthologies, and written for a number of media platforms including The Guardian, CNN and Essence.
Reading Black feminist theory helped me understand myself.
In 1997 I was introduced to feminist theory and the work of Black feminists like bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins and Michele Wallace whilst studying for an undergraduate degree in Communications and Cultural Studies. The work of these writers gave me much needed language for what I had long felt internally, and questioned. I remember being a child and asking my Mum why she cooked for my Dad and stayed up to sit with him whilst he ate his dinner yet complained about how late he came home at night. I remember saying to my Dad, when I grow up, I’m not going to cook for my husband otherwise he will expect me to do that everyday. Even as a child I chafed at the strictures of patriarchy without understanding how systemic and structural it was, and the work of Black American feminists helped me to understand myself, a young African girl who had moved away from her home in Accra to London, a city where I had been born but barely knew at the time. Subsequently, I discovered a rich plethora of African feminists. That journey started with going back to the work of Ama Ata Aidoo, a pioneer writer and feminist whose books portrayed women in all their complexities.
I have been able to expand my community of African feminists through connections
It didn’t take long for me to search for a community of African feminists and I found them first in books, primarily in the literary works of Ama Ata Aidoo and Buchi Emecheta (although I was shocked later to hear Buchi say in a documentary that she didn’t identify as a feminist). Then came the African feminist community that I got introduced to, initially through Akina Mama wa Afrika in London, and later the African Women’s Development Fund in Ghana and the African Feminist Forums it convened. In more recent times, I have been able to expand my community of African feminists through connections made in digital spaces and in various activist and literary spaces.