Sophie Oluwole (1935-2018) was a Nigerian scholar and the first woman to earn a PhD in philosophy in her country. She not only placed Nigeria’s rich Yoruba philosophical tradition on the intellectual map, she also helped redefine African philosophy, a field dominated by men.
As a scholar of cultural studies with a focus on francophone and west Africa, I recently co-authored, in French, a book called African Intellectual Sensitivities: From Western Discourse to African Voices (1988-2022). One of its chapters is devoted to Oluwole and African women intellectuals.
She did much more than break gender barriers. By placing Nigeria’s Yoruba thought in dialogue with the famed western philosophers like Socrates, she challenged the assumption that African philosophy was merely folklore. To her it was a rigorous intellectual tradition.
