Oley Dibba-Wadda


Oley Lucretia Clara Dibba-Wadda is a writer, CEO and Gambian activist. She was born and educated in England. She has led the Forum for African Women Educationalists and she is the founder and CEO of the charity Gam Africa Institute for Leadership.
She was a 2019 Amujae Initiative fellow.

Life

Dibba-Wadda was born in 1967 in Oxford. Her mother was Lucretia Eleanor Clara Dibba and her father, Omar Baboucar Yusupha Dibba, was an Oxford student. Her parents were from Fajara. She received her first name from her paternal grandmother. Her grandmother and mother were adopted by the childless Lucretia St. Clair Joof, the first female Gambian Member of Parliament.  She has three younger siblings and is married to the Gambian sportsman Bye Malleh Wadda they have a daughter and four sons. She has British and Gambian nationality.
She graduated from the University of East Anglia where she studied for a doctorate while working full-time for Oxfam in Oxford.
She became the CEO of Forum for African Women Educationalist in 2014. The NGO looks at girls' education in Africa.
In 2017 she started the charity Gam Africa Institute for Leadership and she published her memoirs, "Memoirs of an African Woman on a Mission".
Dibba-Wadda was Executive Secretary of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa. She was the Executive Director of the Forum for African Women Educationalists. She was Executive Director of Femmes Africa Solidarité. She is Director of Human Capital, at the African Development Bank. She notably joined the Gambian United Democratic Party in early January 2020.
In 2022 Ophelia Inez Weeks left the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development where she was the lead. Dibba-Wadda took over as interim replacement in 2022.
In September 2025 her keynote speech in Abuja at the Gender Inclusion Summit claimed that marginalised groups, non-binary people and women were not involved but leading change.

Awards

  • “Inspiring Woman of Excellence”, 2012
  • “African Woman Leadership”, 2013
  • "New African Woman in Education", 2017 nominee
  • “She Awards” for Outstanding Woman Writer, 2020 nominee
  • first cohort of 15 African women leaders across Africa for the President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf “Amujae Initiative”

Works include

  • "Memoirs of an African Woman on a Mission", 2017
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