Ama Ata Aidoo (23 March 1942 – 31 May 2023) was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, politician, and academic. She was the Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings's PNDC administration.

Aidoo's first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making her the first published female African dramatist. As a novelist, she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1992 with the novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.

Christina Ama Ata Aidoo was born on 23rd March, 1942 in Abeadzi Kyiakor, near Saltpond, in the Central Region of Ghana. She was initially called Christiana Ama Aidoo. Some sources ( including Megan Behrent, Brown University, and Africa Who's Who) have stated that she was born on 31st March. She had a twin brother, Kwame Ata.

Aidoo was raised in a Fante royal household, the daughter of Nana Yaw Fama, chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor, and Maame Abasema. Her grandfather was murdered by neocolonialists, which brought her father's attention to the importance of educating the children and families of the village on the history and events of the era. This led him to open up the first school in their village and influenced Aidoo to attend Wesley Girls' High School, where she first decided she wanted to be a writer.

Aidoo later credited her years at Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast with nurturing her early interest in literature.

From 1957, Aidoo attended Wesley Girls' Senior High School in Cape Coast. After high school, she enrolled at the University of Ghana, Legon, in 1961 where she obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English and wrote her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964. The play was published by Longman the following year, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist.

After graduating, Aidoo held a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University in California before returning to Ghana in 1969 to teach English at the University of Ghana. She served as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies there and as a lecturer in English at the University of Cape Coast, where she eventually rose to the position of professor.

Aidoo was appointed Minister of Education under the Provisional National Defence Council in 1982. She resigned after 18 months, realizing that she would be unable to achieve her aim of making education in Ghana freely accessible to all. She has portrayed the role of African women in contemporary society. She has opined that the idea of nationalism has been deployed by recent leaders as a means of keeping people oppressed. She criticized those literate Africans who profess to love their country but are seduced by the benefits of the developed world. She believed in a distinct African identity, which she viewed from a female perspective. She held strong Pan-Africanist views on the necessity of unity among African countries and was outspoken about the centuries of exploitation of Africa's resources and peoples by western powers.