WHO WAS CHEIKH ANTA DIOP?

Cheikh Anta Diop, born on December 29, 1923 in Thieytou, was a Senegalese scholar and important African historian who largely contributed to the overhaul of African historiography freed from Euro-centric precepts.

Egyptologist, anthropologist, ethnologist, sociologist, Pan-Africanist politician in favor of an African federal state, he left for France at the age of 23 where he studied. Passionate about Egyptology, he claimed in a doctoral thesis at the University of Paris that ancient Egypt was a Negro-African civilization. Thesis which was refused to him. He will obtain his doctorate in 1960.

However, he publishes his demonstration theses in his famous work “Nations Nègres et Culture”, considered today as the historical testament of Africans, among the many other works he has published. In 1974, with the Egyptologist Théophile Obenga, he participated in a symposium in Cairo to demonstrate his thesis Considered as the founding fathers of the epistemological current that is Afrocentricity, he is undoubtedly the greatest scholar of all time. It was opposed by President Leopold Sedar Senghor.

Diop died in Dakar on February 7, 1986, leaving a legacy that the intellectuals Théophila Obenga and Grégoire Biyogo are trying to keep alive (also late Nioussere Kalala Omotunde during his lifetime, recently deceased).

“The African who has understood us is the one who, after having read our works, will have felt the birth within him of another man, animated by a historical consciousness, a true creator, a Prometheus, bearer of a new civilization and perfectly aware of what the earth owes to its ancestral genius in all fields of science, culture and religion” – Cheikh Anta Diop. #DaylightAfrica

Courtesy: Lamin Sanyang