The first female Nigerian doctor, Agnes Yewande Savage, was born on February 21, 1906, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a Nigerian father named Richard Akinwande Savage and a Scottish mother named Maggie S. Bowie.
Yewande Savage received a scholarship to study at George Watson’s Ladies College and was admitted to the Royal College of Music in 1919 at the tender age of thirteen.
Later, Agnes Yewande Savage went to Edinburgh University to study medicine, where she got her degree with flying colors. In 1929, she received the Dorothy Gilfillon Memorial Prize for the most outstanding female graduate. She became the first female doctor in Nigeria.
She worked for the colonial service in Ghana after graduating from Edinburgh University, where she was subjected to agonizing gender and racial discrimination in her medical career.
Despite being a brilliant and exceptional student, Yewande Savage lived in the servants’ quarters and was paid a pittance. After that, in 1931, she worked as a teacher and a medical officer for Andrew Fraser, who was the headmaster of Achimota College.
She eventually returned to the Colonial Office medical service, where, with Andrew Fraser’s assistance, her pay and benefits were brought into line with those of other white staff members.
After that, in 1947, she took her retirement and spent the rest of her life caring for her brother’s son and daughter in Hertfordshire, England. The first female Nigerian doctor, Agnes Yewande Savage, passed away in 1964.
