Ndella Paye

She has been particularly intent on ensuring a successful future for her three daughters, giving them self-confidence through a good education and convincing them that black skin and afro hair are features of beauty.

[1][2][3] Born in Senegal in c. 1974, Ndella Paye arrived in France in 1993 to join her father, Jacques Diouf, a diplomat.

While in Paris, she graduated in Arabic and Muslim Theology, followed by a master's degree in Religious Sciences and Society at the École pratique des hautes études.

[2] Her feminist activism began in 2004 with preparations for a law prohibiting young women to wear the hijab in French schools.

[2][4] Inspired by Thomas Sankara and Angela Davis, her role model remains her mother, a nurse and a unionist, who fought for the pill despite her husband's objections.