Katharina Oguntoye (born January 1959 in Zwickau, East Germany)[1] is an Afro-German writer, historian, activist, and poet.

She founded the nonprofit intercultural association Joliba[2] in Germany and is perhaps best known for co-editing the book Farbe bekennen with May Ayim (then May Opitz) and Dagmar Schultz.

[3] According to statements from Oguntoye her mother met her father at the University of Leipzig, where he was studying with the help of a scholarship from the German Democratic Republic.

[7] In 1984 Oguntoye attended seminars from the American poet and activist Audre Lorde who, amongst other things, was a visiting lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin.

[10] In a 2019 interview with L-Mag, Oguntoye recalled, “Our coming out as black Germans made white feminists reflect more and realize: These are privileges.

We as Afro-Germans have these rights to a certain extent with our German passports, but we are continuously denied them.”[11] Oguntoye began studying history at the Technical University in 1985.

[13] Oguntoye explains her motivation for her engagement above all else with the fact that black people in Germany continue to be invisible and don’t have equal rights.