There are people who do their jobs. And then there are people who become their work — whose identity and their mission fuse so completely that you cannot speak of one without the other.
Edna Leslie Kuma was the second kind.
When the news of her passing reached the AWLA family in December 2023, it did not feel like the loss of a colleague. It felt like the loss of a cornerstone. Because for decades, Edna Kuma had been holding up a structure that existed to protect the most vulnerable women and children in Ghana — and she had been holding it up largely through the force of her own will, her knowledge, and her irreplaceable commitment to justice.
A career built entirely on service
Edna Leslie Kuma was called to the Bar on 17 November 1982. For a decade, she was in private legal practice with the law firm of Anieyi Chambers, from 1983 to 1993. She then moved into corporate practice, serving as Head of Administration and Company Secretary at the Ghana Oil Palm Development Company from 1997 to 2000.
But it is not the corporate world for which Edna Kuma will be remembered.
She co-founded the African Women Lawyers Association Ghana and rose through its ranks — from member to Executive Director, to Country Representative, and finally in 2019 to the Vice Presidency of AWLA Globally. That arc — from the founding of a small association of Ghanaian women lawyers to the global vice presidency of a continental body — tells you everything you need to know about the trajectory of her ambition and the depth of her dedication.
For over 25 years, from 1997 to December 2023, she served AWLA without pause.
The boards she sat on. The institutions she shaped.
Beyond AWLA, Edna Kuma’s fingerprints are on a remarkable range of institutions. She served on the board of the International Federation of Female Lawyers (FIDA) from 1997 to 1998. She served Vision Fund from 2002 to 2015. She sat on the Legal Aid Board from 2001 to 2013. She served the Kweku Hutchful Foundation, the African Leadership and Management Academy from 2002 to 2009, and continued active service on several boards until the very end of her life.
Each of these positions was not a title. It was a responsibility she took seriously — as a trainer of trainees, a keynote speaker at national and international seminars, and AWLA’s representative at both the African Union and ECOWAS.
What she sacrificed — and why
In an interview she gave to The Chronicle newspaper years ago, Edna Kuma was characteristically direct about what her commitment to AWLA had cost her personally. She had thrived in the corporate world. She had a career that was going well. But she made a decision — a deliberate, eyes-open decision — that women needed help, and that she had to sacrifice her own professional comfort for the common good.
“I am a career woman,” she said. “I thrived on work in the corporate world. However, I came to the conclusion that women needed our help and that I had to sacrifice my own career for the common good of everybody.”
That sentence deserves to be read slowly. A successful lawyer, walking away from a lucrative path, to work for an organisation that was underfunded, understaffed, and dependent on foreign donors. Not because it was easy. But because it was right.
The awards that recognised what everyone already knew
In 2005, she received a Silver Award for Women Development Advocacy Services in Ghana. In 2009, WISE presented her with a Seal of Excellence for Dedicated Support and Commitment to the Empowerment and Healing of Abused Women and Children. In 2012, FIDA recognised her contribution to the promotion and protection of women’s human rights through their legal aid programme. The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection cited her for exemplary efforts to the passage of Bills. In 2021, AWLA named her among its Top 5 Most Impacting Members. In 2023 — the year she passed — she was named African Influential Woman of the Year by the African Women Lawyers Association.
The awards were many. But the people who knew her best knew that Edna Kuma was not collecting trophies. She was doing the work.
What she leaves behind
She was interred on Saturday 9 March 2024 in Accra, Ghana. At her thanksgiving service, the room held people who had travelled from across Africa to say goodbye — among them AWLA’s founder and Life Patron Betty Mould-Iddrisu, AWLA President Mandy Demechi-Asagba, AWLA Ghana Country Representative Effiba Amihere, Yvonne Nkrumah, Chief Executive of the Food and Drug Agency, and many others who had worked alongside her for years.
What she leaves behind cannot be measured only in the organisations she built or the cases she fought. She leaves behind a standard. A way of showing up — consistently, fiercely, selflessly — for people who had no one else showing up for them.
For AWLA Ghana, she is not simply a person we have lost. She is a person we must live up to.
Edna Leslie Kuma: called to the Bar 17 November 1982. Co-founder of AWLA Ghana. Vice President, AWLA Worldwide. Passed away December 2023. Interred 9 March 2024, Accra, Ghana. May she rest in perfect peace.