Gisèle Rabesahala is a Malagasy politician who dedicated her life to the independence of her country, to human rights and the freedom of people. At the age of 17, she took her first steps into politics by becoming involved as secretary in the Democratic Movement for Malagasy Renewal (MDRM), which campaigns for the country’s independence. […]

Born into a very modest family in Monrovia, the young teenager Georges Weah started playing football in a modest club in the city. In 1988, he plays at Tonnerre in Yaoundé. It is the beginning of his international career which reached its peak when it won the 1995 FIFA Ballon d’Or award, and became thus […]

Gamal Abdel Nasser became involved at a very young age in the fight against British influence in Egypt. As a lieutenant-colonel, he founded in 1945 the Mouvement of Free Officers, in 1952 led a military coup d’état against King Farouk and proclaimed the Republic in 1953. Among the main actors of the conference of Bandoeng […]

Frantz Fanon was a physician and writer, a Martinican anti-colonialist fighter. In 1957, as a psychiatrist posted in Blida (Algeria), he is suspected of collaboration with the rebels and expelled. Exiled in Tunis, capital of the FLN in exile, he becomes one of the main spokespersons and editors of El Moujahid, the body of FLN […]

Félix Houphouët-Boigny was the First President of Côte d’Ivoire from 1960 to 1993. Nicknamed « the wise man », he is the « father » of the independence of the Côte d’Ivoire. Successively traditional chief, doctor, planter, trade union leader, Member of Parliament in France, Minister of French Governments, President of the Ivorian National Assembly, Mayor of Abidjan, First […]

Claudia Jones, born Vera Cumberbatch, is a journalist, feminist and Trinidadian communist. This civil rights activist is a descendant of Carribean slaves who first joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) before joining the Young Communist League in 1936, the youth branch of the American Communist Party. Expelled from the United […]

Cheikh Anta Diop is a Senegalese anthropologist, Egyptologist and politician who owes his international renown partly to the theses he developed and argued throughout his life about the anteriority of black civilizations, the Negro origins of ancient Egypt and the rich history of pre-colonial Black Africa, particularly through its languages and cultural unity. In 1966, […]

Activist and revolutionary politician, Carmen Pereira is an active member of the PAIGC for the independence of Guinea-Bissau. Elected at the National People’s Congress of which she was vice-president from 1973 to 1984, she will become president in 1984. Carmen Pereira also became President of the Council of State (Acting President of the country) until […]

Betty McLeod Bethune is an American educator and activist for the defence of citizens’ rights. Born into a family of former slaves, she has, from her childhood, a taste for knowledge that pushed her to enrol in the local school, where she learns to read and write. This opens the doors to higher education, she […]

Battling Siki, whose real name is Louis Mbarick Amadou Fall, is one of the most famous boxers in the early 20th century. Born in Saint-Louis of Senegal in 1897, he arrives in France as a teenager and soon starts boxing and becoming excellent boxer. Enrolled as soldier in the French army, Battling Siki distinguishes himself […]