Zainab Monisola Olaitan is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights and an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria. She is also a Research Associate at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg. She completed her PhD degree in Political Science from the University of Pretoria with her thesis titled ‘gender quotas and the substantive representation of women in African politics: case studies of Botswana and South Africa’. In 2022, she was awarded the Margaret McNamara Education Grant for her impactful research and advocacy work on women and children. Zainab studied for a Masters’ degree in Political Science as a 2019 Mastercard Foundation Scholar, University of Pretoria. In 2018, she was selected as a Mandela Rhodes Scholar to study for a Postgraduate Honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Cape Town. In 2016, she completed her first degree in Political Science from the University of Lagos as the best graduating student in her department.

Zainab’s research focuses on locating women across different sectors with a central question on how are women represented in Africa? She is deeply interested in understanding the impact of women's political participation on the qualitative well-being of African women across different sectors. She has published widely in journals, book projects, policy briefs on themes bordering on feminist thought, gender and representation, African indigenous knowledge systems, conflict and peace studies. Zainab is a member of the African Association of Political Science (AAPS), the African Indigenous knowledge Research Network (AIKRN) and the Sexual Reproductive Justice Coalition.

Aside from her academic and research work, Zainab is a Co-founder and Team lead at AfroTada. AfroTada is a social enterprise that aims to curate and preserve African content and knowledge in single and easy to navigate platform. Zainab loves to dance, watch movies and enjoy a good time with friends.