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Long told in masculine terms, the exploration of Africa was also marked by daring women who braved dangers, traveled unknown territories and challenged the certainties of their time.
From Mary Kingsley, who explored West Africa at the end of the 19th century, to Beryl Markham, a pioneer of aviation in Africa, these explorers contributed, each in their own way, to transforming the Western outlook on the continent.
Their work during their various missions tells as much the story of discoveries and challenges as that of a time when women had to conquer their place in a world dominated by men.
Some of them are not necessarily explorers in the etymological sense of the term, but as pioneers in their field of activity, they have contributed to a better approach to the continent.
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1/ Mary Kingsley (1862-1900)
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Mary Kingsley, also known as Mary Henrietta Kingsley, was a British explorer, ethnographer and writer, born in London in 1862.
Having received little formal education, she trained largely through her father's scientific and geographical library.
After the death of her parents in 1892, she undertook two major trips to West Africa, notably traveling through territories corresponding to today's Gabon and Cameroon, often by canoe and with the help of local guides. She also traveled through Nigeria and became the first major British explorer of West Africa.
Kingsley was particularly interested in the religions, customs and social structures of the populations she encountered in Africa, notably the Fangs.
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His observations of African societies, his scientific collections and his travel stories have contributed greatly to challenging several European prejudices about Africa.
It showed that African people had to be understood through their own cultures, not just by European standards.
2/ Alexine Tinne (1835-1869)
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Born in The Hague in 1835 into a very wealthy family, Alexine Tinne, whose real name was Alexandrine Pieternella Françoise Tinne, was a Dutch explorer, photographer and collector mainly known for her travels in Africa.
After a first trip to Egypt in 1850, she ventured further south, becoming one of the first European women to explore the Upper Nile.
Between 1862 and 1864, accompanied by her mother, her aunt as well as the explorers Theodor von Heuglin and Hermann Steudner, she went up the White Nile and participated in an expedition to the Bahr el-Ghazal region.
Tropical diseases then caused the death of several of his relatives and traveling companions.
In 1869, she left Tripoli at the head of a large caravan towards Mourzouq, in Fezzan, with the intention of continuing her exploration towards the interior of the Sahara. But on August 1, 1869, while heading towards Ghat, she was killed along with two of her Dutch companions.
She was one of the first women to lead real scientific expeditions in Africa, at a time when this field was almost exclusively male. She remains an important figure in the history of photography and European explorations of the 19th century.
3/ Delia Akeley (1869-1970)
Photo credit, Dewitt C. Ward/Wikimedia Commons
Born on December 5, 1869 in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, United States, to farmer parents of Irish origin, Patrick and Margaret Denning, Delia Akeley was an American explorer, photographer and writer, known for her African expeditions at the beginning of the 20th century.
First associated with her husband Carl Akeley's expeditions to East Africa for the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago in 1905, then for the Museum of Natural History in New York in 1909, she subsequently established herself as an independent explorer for several months after Carl was seriously injured by an elephant.
In 1923, after her divorce from Carl, she returned to Africa at the head of an expedition financed by the Brooklyn Museum, an exceptional responsibility for a woman at the time.
Between 1924 and 1925, Encyclopedia tells us, "she traveled across equatorial Africa, photographed and collected specimens, and stayed several months with people in the Ituri forest, before reaching the western coast."
She led several missions devoted to the wildlife and populations of Central Africa.
After carefully observing the behavior of primates during her expeditions, she published "J.T., Jr.: The Biography of an African Monkey", telling the story of a monkey brought from Kenya that she had tamed and named "J.T. Junior". She also published the work "Jungle Portraits" in 1930.
“His stories combine zoological, ethnographic observations and expedition memories and contributed to making Africa known to the American public,” says Encyclopedia.
Delia Akeley died on May 22, 1970, aged 100.
4/ Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904)
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Isabelle Eberhardt was born in Geneva in 1877. Journalist, writer and traveler, she is closely linked to Algeria through her life and work.
Through her nomadism, her adoption of Islam and her rejection of the social conventions of her time, she became a singular figure in travel literature.
Raised in a cosmopolitan and polyglot environment, she learned Arabic and began writing at a young age.
Having left for Algeria with her mother in 1897, she led, after the latter's death, a largely nomadic existence between North Africa, Geneva and Marseille, often traveling under the male identity of Si Mahmoud Saadi.
She traveled the Sahara disguised as a man, which allowed her to move through spaces then difficult to access for European women and to carry out her observations with great freedom.
His conversion to Islam and his links with the Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood deeply integrated him into Algerian Muslim society and distanced him from European colonial circles.
Through her reports, she describes the daily life of Algerians, poverty, spirituality, Saharan landscapes and relationships of colonial domination.
Isabelle Eberhardt died at the age of 27, on October 21, 1904, following the collapse of the house where she was staying in Aïn Sefra, in southwest Algeria, after a flash flood.
Manuscripts were recovered after the disaster and a large part of his texts were published posthumously by Victor Barrucand.
“My daily workers”, “Pages of Islam”, “In the warm shadow of Islam”, “Writings on the sand” (two volumes) are part of his work published posthumously.
More than an explorer, she sought to live within the societies she traveled to better understand and know them.
5/ Gertrude Caton-Thompson (1888-1985)
Photo credit, National Portrait Gallery
Born on February 1, 1888 in London, United Kingdom, Gertrude Caton-Thompson is a British archaeologist and prehistorian, particularly known for her research in Egypt and southern Africa.
During the First World War, between 1914 and 1918, she worked in the British administration before undertaking training in archeology in 1921, at the age of 33, with the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in London. She then participated in his excavations in Egypt.
Very early on, she specialized in prehistory, with a particular interest in the study of ancient habitats. Thanks to her research carried out in Fayoum, Egypt, between 1924 and 1928 with the geologist Elinor Gardner, she became a pioneer of new methods combining archaeology, geology, stratigraphy and landscape study to understand Neolithic populations.
Gertrude Caton-Thompson also uncovers the remains of a predynastic village belonging to the very ancient Badarian culture, at Hemamieh.
In 1929, she led an investigation into the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, at a time when colonial theories still attributed this monument to builders from elsewhere.
His work contributed decisively to establishing the African origin of Great Zimbabwe. His excavations confirm David Randall-MacIver's earlier conclusions that this monumental ensemble is the work of an indigenous African civilization, while revealing evidence of trade relations with the Indian Ocean world.
Gertrude Caton-Thompson then continued her research in the Kharga oasis, in Egypt, then in Hadhramaut, in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, in 1937 and 1938. Her work was among the first scientific excavations carried out in this region.
In 1944, she was elected a member of the British Academy and received several scientific distinctions.
Author of major works such as The Desert Fayum (1934) and Kharga Oasis in Prehistory (1952), she died on April 18, 1985 on Broadway, in Worcestershire, United Kingdom, at the age of 97.
6/ Freya Stark (1893-1993)
Born January 31, 1893, Freya Stark is a British explorer and writer. She became famous for her travels to the Middle East and her stories combining observation of societies, history and literary prose.
In 1920, shortly after the end of the First World War, Freya Stark began a journey that took her to Persia, now Iran, Iraq, Syria and Arabia, often to regions then little traveled by European travelers.
Inspired by the experience of her stay in the mountain valleys in Persia, she published the work "The Valleys of the Assassins" in 1934. Two years later, in 1936, her expeditions in Hadhramaut inspired her other great work "The Southern Gates of Arabia".
Stark's uniqueness lies more in his way of looking at and relating to the people he meets. His stories focus on conversations, customs, clothing and daily life. She is the author of more than thirty books and is one of the great names in 20th century British travel literature.
Freya Stark worked for the British in the Middle East and participated in the creation of the Brotherhood of Freedom in Egypt, intended to mobilize opinion in favor of the Allies during the Second World War.
For having contributed to introducing the Sahara and North African cultures to a wide audience, she received several distinctions during her career, including the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972.
She died at the age of 100 in Asolo, Italy in 1993.
7/ Jane Goodall (1934-2025)
Born on 3 April 1934 in Hampstead, London, Jane Goodall is a British ethologist, primatologist and anthropologist.
After obtaining a secretary diploma, she took on several small jobs. In 1957, at the age of 23, she traveled to British Kenya at the invitation of a friend. There she met the archaeologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey, who was then carrying out important research in East Africa and hired her as his secretary.
Jane Goodall was the first scientist to observe and document the use of tools by chimpanzees for food.
Passionate about animals since her childhood and a vegetarian, she decided in 1960 to live as close as possible to chimpanzees in order to better observe and understand them.
It was during these observations that she saw a chimpanzee making and using a tool to extract termites. This discovery then calls into question certain conceptions of the time about what distinguished human beings from other species.
His work contributes to profoundly transforming the understanding of the relationships between human beings and other animals.
Although she did not initially have a university degree, Jane Goodall was encouraged by Louis Leakey to undertake a doctorate at Newnham College, University of Cambridge.
In 1965, she completed a thesis in ethology entitled Behavior of Free-Living Chimpanzees, under the supervision of zoologist Robert Hinde.
She then moved to Tanzania, in the Lake Tanganyika region, within what is now Gombe Stream National Park, to study the behavior of chimpanzees.
In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, dedicated to research, biodiversity protection and education.
Jane Goodall died at the age of 91 on October 1, 2025, in Los Angeles, United States.
8/ Mary Leakey (1913-1996)
Photo credit, Smithsonian Institution Archives/Wikimedia Commons
Born on February 6, 1913 in London, United Kingdom, Mary Leakey was a British paleoanthropologist whose field work had a profound impact on the study of human origins.
In 1935, she discovered in Tanzania two fragments of parietal bones attributed to a probable Homo erectus. The rigor of his excavations subsequently allowed him to make several major discoveries in East Africa.
It was she who uncovered, in 1948, on the island of Rusinga in Lake Victoria, the skull of Proconsul africanus, a primate considered to be a common ancestor of monkeys and the first hominids, having lived around 25 million years ago.
With her husband, Louis Leakey, she made important discoveries of Homo erectus and australopithecines, including Zinjanthropus ("Zinj"), approximately 1.8 million years old, unearthed in 1959 at the site of Olduvai, in Tanzania.
Mary Leakey also led several research campaigns at Laetoli, notably in 1959, in 1964, then from 1974.
From 1978, she became known worldwide for her participation in the study of the fossilized footprints of three bipedal hominids preserved in volcanic ash at Laetoli, Tanzania. These tracks, approximately 3.7 million years old, are considered the oldest known hominid footprints.
His research in the Olduvai Gorge also led to the discovery of numerous fossils and stone tools, contributing to a better understanding of the first representatives of the genus Homo.
Mary Leakey's discoveries helped make East Africa a central region for the study of human evolution and remains a benchmark for researchers working on the origins of humanity.
She died on December 9, 1996 in Nairobi, Kenya.
9/ Anne Spoerry (1918-1999)
Born on May 13, 1918 in Cannes, France, Anne Spoerry was a French doctor and pilot nicknamed "Mama Daktari", a Swahili expression roughly meaning "Mama Doctor".
Engaged in the French Resistance during the Second World War, she was arrested in 1943 then deported to the Ravensbrück camp, where she worked as a medical assistant.
After the war, several former inmates accused her of mistreatment and homicides in block 10, then headed by Carmen Mory. An investigation opened in Switzerland in 1947 was, however, dismissed due to lack of sufficient evidence.
Anne Spoerry is best known for providing medical care to isolated populations in Kenya for several decades using airplanes as a means of transportation.
After studying medicine in Paris and training in tropical medicine, she moved to Kenya in 1950. She learned to fly in 1963.
In 1964, she joined the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF). At the controls of a small plane, she serves remote communities and provides medical consultations, vaccination campaigns, maternal care and child care.
Thanks to her commitment, she carries out medical tours in vast regions where access to a doctor is rare or even non-existent.
In 1994, Anne Spoerry recounted her journey in her autobiography, On m'appelle Mama Daktari.
She died in Nairobi, Kenya on February 2, 1999, aged 80.
10/ Beryl Markham (1902-1986)
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Born on October 26, 1902 in Ashwell, England, Beryl Markham was a British aviator and writer who grew up in Kenya, where she moved with her family at a young age.
She spent her childhood near Njoro, in contact with local communities and horses raised by her father. Passionate about horse racing, she became the first woman in Kenya to obtain a professional horse trainer's license.
In the 1920s, Beryl Markham learned to fly before becoming a professional pilot. She notably works as a bush pilot in East Africa.
A pioneer of aviation in Africa, she is best known for her solo crossing of the North Atlantic from east to west.
On September 4, 1936, she took off from England aboard a Percival Vega Gull with the ambition of reaching New York by flying alone against the prevailing winds. After more than twenty hours of flight, fuel supply problems forced him to make a forced landing in Nova Scotia.
She thus became the first woman to cross the North Atlantic solo from east to west without a stopover.
In 1942, she published West with the Night, a book in which she recounted her memories of Kenya and her experiences as a pilot in a critically acclaimed literary style.
Through its aerial activities and travels, it contributes to a better knowledge of vast territories of East Africa and participates in the development of aviation on the continent.
Beryl Markham died on August 3, 1986 in Nairobi, Kenya at the age of 83.
Through their travels, their stories and their exploits, these ten explorers left a unique mark on the history of Africa.
They have contributed to documenting the territories, societies and realities of a continent often described through a reductive angle.
They have not always sought to "discover" new territories, but have largely contributed to a better understanding of the societies, fauna, landscapes and history of Africa. During their missions, they often favored observation, research and exchanges with local populations rather than geographical conquest.
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