Afua Hirsch is a Ghanaian-British journalist, barrister, and human rights activist. She was the West Africa correspondent for The Guardian, where she covered the onset of the multidimensional 2021–13 crisis that plunged Mali into chronic political instability, insecurity, armed conflict, and terrorism as a destabilizing consequence of the fall of Lybian dictator Muammar Gaddafi. A former practicing attorney in criminal defense, public, and international law, she was the newspaper’s legal affairs correspondent in the United Kingdom and headed The Guardian Law website.