Ahmed Sékou Touré
Ahmed Sékou Touré was a trade-union organiser who led Guinea to immediate independence from France in 1958 and became a prominent, increasingly authoritarian Pan-African statesman.
West Africa
Félix Houphouët-Boigny
Félix Houphouët-Boigny moved from African agricultural organising and French parliamentary politics to become the first president of Côte d’Ivoire.
Léopold Sédar Senghor
Léopold Sédar Senghor was a poet, theorist of Négritude and Senegal’s first president, joining cultural affirmation to the difficult practice of building a postcolonial state.
Amílcar Cabral
Amílcar Cabral was an agronomist, revolutionary strategist and Pan-African thinker who led the struggle to end Portuguese colonial rule in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
Bai Bureh
Bai Bureh was a Temne and Loko war leader who became the best-known commander of Sierra Leone’s 1898 resistance to British colonial taxation and political control.
Lat Dior
Lat Dior, damel of Cayor, used warfare, diplomacy and shifting alliances to defend Senegalese political autonomy against French expansion.
Béhanzin
Béhanzin was the final independent ruler of Dahomey, defending the kingdom’s sovereignty against French conquest in two wars from 1890 to 1894.
Thomas Sankara
An expanded contextual biography of Thomas Sankara, examining institutions, decisions, conflict, historical debate and legacy.
Kwame Nkrumah
An expanded contextual biography of Kwame Nkrumah, examining institutions, decisions, conflict, historical debate and legacy.
Samori Touré
An expanded contextual biography of Samori Touré, examining institutions, decisions, conflict, historical debate and legacy.