33 Facts About Joseph Ki-Zerbo

Joseph Ki-Zerbo was a Burkinabe historian, politician and writer.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo is recognized as one of Africa's foremost thinkers.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo was its chairman until 2005, and represented it in the Burkina Faso parliament until his death in 2006.

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

Joseph Ki-Zerbo was the son of Alfred Diban Ki-Zerbo and Therese Folo Ki.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo's father is considered to be the first Burkinabe Christian.

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

Joseph Ki-Zerbo then attended the Grand Seminaire Saint-Pierre Claver at Koumi near Bobo Dioulasso, which trains young men for the Catholic priesthood.

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

Joseph 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.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo studied history and law at the Sorbonne and followed courses in politics at the Sciences Po.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo was the co-founder and president of the Association of Upper Volta Students in France.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo was the president of the Association of African, Caribbean and Malagash Christian Students.

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

Joseph Ki-Zerbo was active in this movement for change, and in 1957 he created a political party, the Mouvement de Liberation Nationale.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo established contact with Kwame Nkrumah, president of the newly independent neighboring state of Ghana.

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

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

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

Joseph Ki-Zerbo wrote a teaching manual called Le Monde Africain Noire, published in 1963.

In 1972, Joseph Ki-Zerbo published the famous Histoire de l'Afrique Noire that became a reference book in African history.

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

Joseph Ki-Zerbo claimed that Africa had reached an upper level of political, social and cultural development before the Atlantic slave trade and colonization.

Sitchet, an Africultures reporter, argued that from 1972 to 1978 Joseph Ki-Zerbo was an executive member of UNESCO.

From 1976 to 2001, Joseph Ki-Zerbo was the president of the African Historian Association and a professor at the University of Ouagadougou.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo's endogenous development is a practice that lets native farmers use their own ideas and traditions alongside new technology.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo got his members in the syndical teachers' class and villagers.

General Secretary of the MLN, Joseph Ki-Zerbo went to the 1970s legislative elections; he got sixth rank.

Many new parties arose like Union Progressiste Voltaique under the control of Joseph Ki-Zerbo that replaced MLN.

Under the power of the new government, Joseph Ki-Zerbo was obliged to go into exile.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo returned to Burkina Faso in 1987 to find that his library of 11,000 books in his hometown Faso had been burned in his absence.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo came back and tried to rebuild by getting a place in parliament.

Joseph Ki-Zerbo extended his fights internationally to make people recognize slavery as a crime against humanity and that Africa should get reparations for this.