Women Chief Justices

Lúcia da Luz Ribeiro was born in 1963 in Maputo, Mozambique. Initially, Ribeiro received her Portuguese Language Teacher certification from the Faculty of Education of Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) in 1984. Ribeiro returned to school to obtain her law degree from UEM in 1994. Ribeiro also attended Polytechnic University of Madrid to obtain her master's in business law. She then trained in Legal Counseling for Companies at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Following her attainment of a law degree, she began serving as a professor at UEM and has continued to do so since 1994. Additionally, she became a legal advisor for the Minister of Public Works and Housing, a role she filled from 1995 until 2003. Ribeiro served as a founding member of the Bar Association of Mozambique. In 2003, Ribeiro became the President of the Jurisdictional Council of the Mozambican Bar Association. She then became the Director of the Faculty of Law at UEM from 2003 to 2004. She began her tenure as a judge on the Constitutional Court in 2003. Additionally, she is a member of the Women’s Law and Development Association, the Mozambican Association of Women in Legal Careers, and the Child, Family, and Development organization. She has concurrently been an associate researcher at Women and Law in Southern Africa and operated as a legal advisor for both government and private institutions in Mozambique. She was elected as the President of the Constitutional Court in Mozambique in 2019 and currently serves in this position. Additionally, she received her PhD in law from the Faculty of Law of UEM in 2019.

Meaza Ashenafi is Ethiopia’s first female President of the Federal Supreme Court, appointed by the Prime Minister of Ethiopia in November 2018. She was born in the Asosa zone in the Beninshangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia in 1964. She was educated at Addis Ababa University at which she received her Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) and then she received a master’s degree in international relations and gender studies from the University of Connecticut. Following her graduation with her master’s, Ashenafi served as a Judge of the High Court of Ethiopia from 1989 to 1992. She also served as a legal adviser for the Ethiopian Constitution Commission in 1993. In 1995, Ashenafi founded the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA). She became the executive director for the association and used the organization to campaign for women’s rights in Ethiopia, contribute to legal reform and provide legal aid to impoverished women. Through the development of EWLA, Ashenafi represented a teenaged girl who killed her kidnapper who was attempting to force the girl into a marriage in 1997. By winning the case, she directly challenged the country’s laws surrounding forced marriage. Ashenafi became an adviser for gender and women’s rights at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in the Capacity Development Division in 2011 and continues to provide conceptual analysis of how to best protect women’s rights throughout Africa. Additionally, Ashenafi assisted with the founding of the first women’s bank in Ethiopia, Enat Bank, which was established in 2011, and on which she chairs the board of directors as of 2016. This previous history of advocating for gender reform and operating in the legal arena in Ethiopia enabled Ashenafi to be appointed by the new prime minister of Ethiopia to become the President of the Federal Supreme Court.

Danielle Darlan is the first woman to lead a governmental institution in the Central African Republic. She was elected by the other nine members of the Constitutional Court in 2017 and is still fulfilling her seven-year, nonrenewable term as President of the Constitutional Court. Previously, Ms. Darlan was a professor teaching and researching public law at the University of Bangui, which she has been doing since 1982. Additionally, in the past, Ms. Darlan operated as a private lawyer defending her clients in the Central African Republic from 1995 to 2003 and worked in the Department of National Education in the minister’s coordination office from 1986 until 1990. She was educated at the Universite de Perpignan Via Domitia in 1971-1975 where she receive her master’s in public law and attended Universite de Provence-Aix-Marseille to receive her juris doctorate degree from 1975-1978. Her most recent case regarded the postponement of a national election for the President of the Central African Republic due to the coronavirus. She affirmed the constitution and that the reform mandate proposed by the President to allow him to remain in office for a longer period was unlawful.

Sophia Akuffo was the successor to the position of Chief Justice in Ghana after Justice Wood retired. She was appointed to the Chief Justice position in 2017. Justice Akuffo was born in 1949 in Ghana. She received her bachelors in law degree from the University of Ghana, following which she attended the Ghana School of Law from which she obtained her qualification as a barrister in Ghana, and called to the Ghana Bar in 1975. She also has a master’s degree in law (LLM) from Harvard University. Sophia Akuffo was originally appointed to the Supreme Court of Ghana by former President Rawlings in 1995 and served on the court successively until her appointment as Chief Justice. She is the longest-serving Supreme Court Judge in Ghana. She was nominated to the Chief Justice position in 2017 by President Nana Akufo-Addo, approved by Parliament, and sworn into the role by the President Nana Akufo-Addo. Additionally, Sophia Akuffo became one of the first judges for the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in 2006. She was re-elected after her 2-year term for an additional 6 years. During this period, she served as the Vice-President of the Court for four years and the President for 2 years before she left the African Court in 2014. Besides working on the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the former Chief Justice was a member of the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council and a member of the Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute. Lady Justice Akuffo retired from the position of Chief Justice in 2019 on the eve of her 70th birthday as the statutory retirement age for Supreme Court judges in Ghana. Since her retirement, she was appointed as chair for the COVID-19 fund by President Nana Akufo-Addo. The Fund was created in order to receive donations from the public to benefit those vulnerable due to COVID-19.