Joseph Ki-Zerbo

In 1915 he intervened during the Volta-Bani War to stop Toma being razed to the ground.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo (June 21, 1922 – December 4, 2006, Burkina Faso) was a Burkinabé historian, politician and writer.

He is recognized as one of Africa's foremost thinkers.

Between 1933 and 1940, Ki-Zerbo was educated at the Catholic primary school in Toma, then completed his secondary school at the preparatory seminaries in Pabré in the Province of Kadiogo and Faladié, a district of Bamako, Mali.

He then attended the Grand Séminaire Saint-Pierre Claver at Koumi near Bobo Dioulasso, which trains young men for the Catholic priesthood.

However, Ki-Zerbo dropped out of the Seminary and went to live in Dakar, Senegal for several years.

In addition to teaching there, he had a job for several months with the weekly newspaper Afrique nouvelle, and also worked as a railway construction labourer.

Ki-Zerbo continued his education part-time and, when he obtained his Baccalaureate in 1949 at the age of 27, he earned a scholarship to study in Paris.

He studied history and law at the Sorbonne and also followed courses in politics at the Sciences Po.

On completion of his studies, he became a certified history and geography teacher, the first from Upper Volta.

After his studies, Ki-Zerbo became a French citizen and was employed as a history and geography teacher in Orléans, Paris and Dakar.

During a visit to Mali, Ki-Zerbo met his wife, educator and activist Jacqueline Coulibaly.

Ki-Zerbo's political activities started while he was student.

He was the co-founder and president of the Association of Upper Volta Students in France (1950–1956).

He was also the president of the Association of African, Caribbean and Malagash Christian Students.

The 1950s was a decade of great optimism in Africa, with many leaders demanding independence.

In 1954, Ki-Zerbo published an article in the newspaper Tam-Tam with the title “On demande des nationalistes” (“We ask the nationalists”).

In Paris, Ki-Zerbo met other intellectuals, such as the Senegalese historian Cheik Anta Diop and Abdoulaye Wade, who was later to become president of Senegal.

Ki-Zerbo was active in this movement for change, and in 1957 he created a political party, the Mouvement de Liberation Nationale (MLN) (National Freedom Movement).

He also established contact with Kwame Nkrumah, president of the newly independent neighboring state of Ghana.

The aims of the MLN were immediate independence for Africans, the creation of a United States of Africa, and socialism.

The MLN contacted nationalist leaders in many of the other French colonies, to persuade them to reject the referendum on the creation of a Franco-African community presented by the French president Charles de Gaulle.

However, in the whole of West Africa at that time, only Guinea voted no to the referendum and, as a result, achieved its independence relatively early in 1958.

As a result, Sekou Touré, the first president of independent Guinea, invited Ki-Zerbo and his wife along with other volunteers to come to Conakry to replace the French teachers who had left.

In 1960, Ki-Zerbo returned to newly independent Upper Volta, explaining to Sekou Touré: "I have to go back home to pursue the fight for independence in others territories”. In 1965, he was nominated as academy inspector and general director of Youth, Sports and Education.

He wrote a teaching manual called Le Monde Africain Noire (Black African World), published in 1963.

He was the co-founder and general director (1967 to 1979) of the Conseil africain et malgache pour l'enseignement supérieur (African and Malagasy Council on Higher Education (CAMES) that assures the academic autonomy of Africans countries.

Ki-Zerbo declared that growing up in a rural area in a big family profoundly influenced his personality and thoughts.

Ki-Zerbo exposed his social and political ideas in many publications on history and culture.

Ki-Zerbo was professor at the University of Ouagadougou from 1968 to 1973.

From 1972 to 1978 he was professor of African History at the University of Ouagadougou.

In 1972, Ki-Zerbo published the famous Histoire de l’Afrique Noire (History of Black Africa) that became a reference book in African history.

In 1983, he was forced into exile, only being able to return in 1992.

Ki-Zerbo founded the Party for Democracy and Progress / Socialist Party.

He was its chairman until 2005, and represented it in the Burkina Faso parliament until his death in 2006.

A socialist and an advocate of African independence and unity, Ki-Zerbo was also a vocal opponent of Thomas Sankara's revolutionary government.

Ki-Zerbo was born in Toma in the province of Nayala, in what was, at that time, the French colony of Upper Volta.

He was the son of Alfred Diban Ki-Zerbo and Thérèse Folo Ki.

His father is considered to be the first Burkinabé Christian.

Holenstein (2006) described that, in his book, Ki-Zerbo challenged the common belief of Africa as a black continent without culture and history.