Education and career

Fatou Keïta was born in Soubré, Ivory Coast. She received her primary education in Bordeaux, where her father was studying surgery. Later, she attended high school in Bouaké and earned her baccalaureate in 1974. In 1981, she graduated from the University of Côte d'Ivoire. She then continued her studies in England and the United States. In 1995, she received a Fulbright Scholarship and traveled to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to research Black African women writers in the United States and England. Afterward, she became a lecturer in the English Department at Université de Cocody.

She has received awards for her writing for children. Her first novel, Rebelle (1998), discusses the topic of female genital cutting.