29-year-old Aminata Toure becomes first Black German cabinet minister

Twenty-nine-year-old Toure was sworn in as the social affairs, youth, family, seniors, integration and equality minister in Germany's northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein, local media reported.

Ms. Toure is the daughter of refugees from Mali and was first voted into Schleswig-Holstein's state parliament in 2017.

Describing her new role as “special”, the minister said she would use the opportunity to fight for equality and against Germany’s right-wing extremism. 

She noted that she had received numerous messages from people who say her appointment has meant "a lot to them." 

Toure is a woman of firsts. She was elected as the state parliament's deputy speaker in 2019, becoming the first Black person and the youngest politician to hold such a position in any of Germany’s 16 states.

Growing up, she spent the first five years of her life in a refugee shelter before gaining German citizenship when she was 12.

She joined the Greens political party in 2012 as a political science and French undergraduate, and has since been vocal about better and swifter integration of refugees in Germany.

“I would like to see a society in which there is no need to give twice as much just because you're different in some way, everyone should have the same opportunities and possibilities," she previously told DW.