Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was born in 1900 in Abeokuta, Nigeria, and trained as a teacher in England, where she also became the first Nigerian woman to drive a car — an early marker of the boundary-breaking spirit that would define her life.

In the 1940s, Ransome-Kuti founded and led the Abeokuta Women's Union, organising thousands of market women in a sustained campaign against unfair taxation imposed without representation, a movement that grew to tens of thousands of members. In 1949, the sustained pressure of the campaign forced the abdication of the Alake of Abeokuta, the traditional ruler who had enforced the unpopular colonial tax policies — a remarkable demonstration of organised women's political power in colonial Africa.

Ransome-Kuti became known as the 'Lioness of Lisabi' and continued activism for women's suffrage and Nigerian independence throughout her life. She was the mother of musician and activist Fela Kuti, whose own confrontations with Nigerian authority echoed his mother's fearless example. She died in Lagos in 1978.