Enid Rosamund Ayodele Forde (23 January 1932–27 January 2010"Sierra Leone, Civil Births and Deaths, 1802-2016," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-V3D6-Y9F1-6 : 14 March 2022), > image 1154 of 2277; Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Republic of Sierra Leone. ) was a Sierra Leonean geographer. She was the first Sierra Leonean woman to gain a PhD, and after her return to Africa from the United States, she chaired the geography department at

Fourah Bay College Fourah Bay College is a public university in the neighbourhood of Mount Aureol in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Founded on 18 February 1827, it is the first western-style university built in Sub-Saharan Africa and, furthermore, the first university-l ...

.Florence Mugambi
Blazing a trail: Women Africanist PhDs
Northwestern Program of African Studies News and Events, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Spring 2020).

Life and career

Enid Rosamund Ayodele Forde was born in

Freetown Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and po ...

, Sierra Leone, and attended Buxton Primary School. She went on to complete studies at the Annie Walsh Memorial Secondary School, which led her to attend Fourah Bay College and

Leeds University , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

United Kingdom. She gained her PhD at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

in 1966, with her dissertation, “The Population of

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

: A Study of the Spatial Relationships of Its Sociocultural and Economic Characteristics." After completing her doctorate at Northwestern in 1966, at age 34, Forde decided to return to her native Sierra Leone to share her love of geography and began teaching at her alma mater, Annie Walsh Memorial Secondary School. Eventually, she became head of the Geography Department at Fourah Bay College –

University of Sierra Leone The University of Sierra Leone is the name of the former unitary public university system in Sierra Leone. Established in February 1827, it is the oldest university in Africa. As of May 2005, the University of Sierra Leone was reconstituted int ...

, and became warden of the Women’s Students program. In 1986, Forde helped to carry out Sierra Leone's national population census. She also helped to popularize country's family planning program. She was known for her support of the Hillside Day Care Centre, which was created in 1995 to care for orphans from civil war in Sierra Leone that caused the deaths of thousands of people there. That Centre became a preparatory school that taught more than 80 children, many of them civil war orphans. Forde's brother, Winston Forde, dedicated his book ''The Story of Mining in Sierra Leone'' to his sister:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Forde, Enid 1932 births Year of death missing Sierra Leonean geographers Fourah Bay College alumni Northwestern University alumni Academic staff of Fourah Bay College Sierra Leone Creole people Sierra Leonean women academics