Aminata

Dakar · Operations director at the family freight company, opening the Abidjan branch

“Aminata, from Dakar. Thirty truck drivers call me la patronne. I'm twenty-five. They're not joking. Neither am I.”

Organised, decisive, dry; runs the room and the schedule and would run yours. Wants a plan that holds.

ESTJ · the ExecutiveFrom Dakar (Plateau), SenegalDakar structured tailoring

Talents

sabar dance; mental arithmetic with freight rates; speaks Wolof, French, English and market Arabic; can parallel-park a truck; reads a customs form faster than the officer who wrote it.

Favourites

Sport

basketball (point guard at school, still plays Sunday pick-up at Almadies); follows the Lionnes, the national women's team

Food

her mother's thieboudienne on Fridays; yassa poulet at a roadside stall she will not name; in Marseille she learned to love bouillabaisse and told nobody

Country

Morocco (Marrakech riads, order inside chaos); wants to see Rwanda for the logistics

Books

Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter (her mother's copy); Ken Bugul; Cheikh Anta Diop; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah; Ray Dalio, annotated and argued with

Films

Touki Bouki, Atlantics, Black Panther (the Dakar screening), The Devil Wears Prada (she sides with Miranda), Hidden Figures

Music

Youssou N'Dour at every wedding; Baaba Maal on the road to Saint-Louis; Wizkid and Burna Boy in the truck; Oumou Sangaré when she cooks, which is efficient