Yaba Badoe | |
|---|---|
 Badoe at the 2015 Zanzibar International Film Festival | |
| Born | 1954 (age 70–71) |
| Nationality | Ghanaian-British |
| Alma mater | King's College, Cambridge |
| Occupation(s) | Documentary filmmaker, journalist and author |
| Spouse | Colin Izod |
| Website | www |
Yaba Badoe (born 1954) [1] is a Ghanaian-British documentary filmmaker, journalist and author. [2]
Yaba Badoe was born in 1954 in Tamale, northern Ghana. [3] She left Ghana to be educated in Britain at a very young age. [4] A graduate of King's College, Cambridge, Badoe worked as a civil servant at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ghana, [4] before beginning her career in journalism as a trainee at the BBC. [5] She also was a researcher at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. She has taught in Spain and Jamaica and has worked as a producer and director making documentaries for the main television channels in Britain. [6] Among her credits are: Black and White (1987), an investigation into race and racism in Bristol, using hidden video cameras for BBC1; I Want Your Sex (1991), an arts documentary exploring images and myths surrounding black sexuality in Western art, literature, film and photography, for Channel 4; and the six-part series Voluntary Service Overseas for ITV in 2002. [6]
In addition to making films, Badoe is a creative writer, her first novel, True Murder, being published in London by Jonathan Cape in 2009. [7] Reviewing True Murder in The Africa Report , Zagba Oyortey described it as "a rich complex of wonder, loss, friendship and prescience from the viewpoint of Ajuba, an African girl transposed from her idyllic home in Ghana to a boarding school in rural England after the collapse of her parents’ marriage." [8] Her short story "The Rivals" was included in the anthology African Love Stories (Ayebia, 2006), edited by Ama Ata Aidoo, [9] and she has also written three children's books. [10]
Badoe directed and co-produced (with Amina Mama) the documentary film The Witches of Gambaga , which won Best Documentary at the Black International Film Festival in 2010, and was awarded Second Prize in the Documentary section of FESPACO 2011. [11] Her most recent film, launched in 2014, is entitled The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo . [12] [13]
In 2016, Badoe participated in the conference-festival "Telling Our Stories of Home: Exploring and Celebrating Changing African and Africa-Diaspora Communities" in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. [14]
She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa , edited by Margaret Busby. [15]
Badoe lives in Balham, London, with her husband, Colin Izod. [16]
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