Joseph Ki-Zerbo, historian, professor and politician from Burkina Faso, has distinguished himself by an exceptional intellectual and academic background. He has studied political science and history, at the Institute of Political Studies of Paris (IEPP) and the Sorbonne. He brilliantly earned his Aggregation in History in 1956, becoming hence the first black African to bear this title. From 1949 to 1956, while devoting himself to his studies, Joseph Ki-Zerbo leads an intense activist life writing engaged articles in magazines such as Tam-Tam and Présence Africaine. Later, he will devote himself to writing African history and describing the conditions for its endogenous development.