Louise Antoinette N'Jie, MBE (née Mahoney; 23 January 1922 – 22 May 2014) was a Gambian teacher, feminist and politician who was the first woman to serve as a cabinet minister in The Gambia.
[1] Her father, Sir John Mahoney, was of Aku descent and was the first Speaker of the National Assembly of the Gambia and her mother, Hannah, was the first Gambian woman to work as a clerk in the Government Secretariat in the 1910s.
[2] Her younger sister Augusta was the first female candidate to stand in a Gambian national election and later married Gambia's first President, Sir Dawda Jawara.
[3] She was appointed a parliamentary secretary in 1979,[7] and in January 1985, became Minister of Youth, Sport and Culture, making her Gambia's first female member of cabinet.
[2][4] She also oversaw the implementation of a cost recovery program in accordance with the Bamako Initiative adopted by African Health Ministers in 1987 to accelerate primary healthcare.
[3] In 2015, on the fiftieth anniversary of Gambia's independence from Britain, she was named by The Standard as one of "50 prominent Gambians who helped to shape the nation.